Republic

And education must make use of both, but first of the false?I don’t understand your meaning.Don’t you understand, I said, that we begin by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before gymnastics. That is so. That, then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before gymnastics. You were right, he said. Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the chief thing,[*](Cf. Laws 753 E, 765 E, Antiphon, fr. 134 Blass.) especially for any creature that is young and tender[*](Cf. Laws 664 B, and Shelley’s Specious names,Learned in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour, perhaps derived from the educational philosophy of Rousseau.)? For it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression[*](The image became a commonplace. Cf. Theaetetus 191 D, Horace Epistles ii. 32. 8, the Stoic τύπωσις ἐν ψυχῇ, and Byron’s Wax to receive and marble to retain.) that one wishes to stamp upon it. Quite so. Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer[*](Cf. the censorship proposed in Laws 656 C. Plato’s criticism of the mythology is anticipated in part by Euripides, Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and Pythagoras. Cf. Decharme, Euripides and the Spirit of his Dramas, translated by James Loeb, chap. ii. Many of the Christian Fathers repeated his criticism almost verbatim.) our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up? By no manner of means will we allow it. We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship over our storymakers, and what they do well we must pass and what not, reject. And the stories on the accepted list we will induce nurses and mothers to tell to the children and so shape their souls by these stories far rather than their bodies by their hands. But most of the stories they now tell we must reject. What sort of stories? he said. The example of the greater stories, I said, will show us the lesser also. For surely the pattern must be the same and the greater and the less must have a like tendency. Don’t you think so? I do, he said; but I don’t apprehend which you mean by the greater, either. Those, I said, that Hesiod[*](Theogony 154-181.) and Homer and the other poets related. These, methinks, composed false stories which they told and still tell to mankind. Of what sort? he said; and what in them do you find fault? With that, I said, which one ought first and chiefly to blame, especially if the lie is not a pretty one. What is that? When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models. It is certainly right to condemn things like that, he said; but just what do we mean and what particular things?

There is, first of all, I said, the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge; and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity[*](Conservative feeling or caution prevents Plato from proscribing absolutely what may be a necccessary part of traditional or mystical religion.) for relating them, that only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig,[*](The ordinary sacrifice at the Eleusinian mysteries. Cf. Aristophanes Acharn. 747, Peace 374-375; Walter Pater, Demeter and the Pig.) but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales. Why, yes, said he, such stories are hard sayings. Yes, and they are not to be told, Adeimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in the hearing of a young man, that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father’s[*](Plato does not sympathize with the Samuel Butlers of his day.) wrong-doings to the limit, but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.[*](The argument, whether used in jest or earnest, was a commonplace. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. 137, Laws 941 B, Aeschylus Eumenides 640-641, Terence Eunuchus 590 At quem deum! . . . ego homuncio hoc non facerem. The Neoplatonists met the criticism of Plato and the Christian Fathers by allegorizing or refining away the immoral parts of the mythology, but St. Augustine cleverly retorts (De Civ. Dei, ii. 7): Omnes enim . . . cultores talium deorum . . . magis intuentur quid Iupiter fecerit quam quid docuerit Plato.) No, by heaven, said he, I do not myself think that they are fit to be told. Neither must we admit at all, said I, that gods war with gods[*](Cf. the protest in the Euthyphro 6 B, beautifully translated by Ruskin, Aratra Pentelici 107: And think you that there is verily war with each other among the gods? And dreadful enmities and battles, such as the poets have told, and such as our painters set forth in graven sculpture to adorn all our sacred rites and holy places. Yes, and in the great Panathenaia themselves the Peplus full of such wild picturing, is carried up into the Acropolis—shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthyphron, right-minded friend?) and plot against one another and contend—for it is not true either— if we wish our future guardians to deem nothing more shameful than lightly to fall out with one another; still less must we make battles of gods and giants the subject for them of stories and embroideries,[*](On the Panathenaic πέπλος of Athena.) and other enmities many and manifold of gods and heroes toward their kith and kin. But if there is any likelihood of our persuading them that no citizen ever quarrelled with his fellow-citizen and that the very idea of it is an impiety, that is the sort of thing that ought rather to be said by their elders, men and women, to children from the beginning and as they grow older, and we must compel the poets to keep close to this in their compositions. But Hera’s fetterings[*](The title of a play by Epicharmus. The hurling of Hephaestus, Iliad i. 586-594.) by her son and the hurling out of heaven of Hephaestus by his father when he was trying to save his mother from a beating, and the battles of the gods[*]( Iliad xx. 1-74; xxi. 385-513.) in Homer’s verse are things that we must not admit into our city either wrought in allegory[*](ὑπόνοια: the older word for allegory; Plutarch, De Aud. Poet. 19 E. For the allegorical interpretation of Homer in Plato’s time cf. Jebb, Homer, p. 89, and Mrs. Anne Bates Hersman’s Chicago Dissertation: Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation.) or without allegory. For the young are not able to distinguish what is and what is not allegory, but whatever opinions are taken into the mind at that age are wont to prove indelible and unalterable. For which reason, maybe, we should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be so composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears. Yes, that is reasonable, he said; but if again someone should ask us to be specific and say what these compositions may be and what are the tales, what could we name?

And I replied, Adeimantus, we are not poets,[*](The poet, like the rhetorician (Politicus 304 D), is a ministerial agent of the royal or political art. So virtually Aristotle, Politics 1336 b.) you and I at present, but founders of a state. And to founders it pertains to know the patterns on which poets must compose their fables and from which their poems must not be allowed to deviate; but the founders are not required themselves to compose fables. Right, he said; but this very thing—the patterns or norms of right speech about the gods, what would they be? Something like this, I said. The true quality of God we must always surely attribute to him whether we compose in epic, melic, or tragic verse. We must. And is not God of course[*](The γε implies that God is good ex vi termini.) good in reality and always to be spoken of[*](It is charcteristic of Plato to distinguish the fact and the desirability of proclaiming it. The argument proceeds by the minute links which tempt to parody. Below τὸ ἀγαθόν, followed by οὐδ’ ἄρα . . . ὁ θεός, is in itself a refutation of the ontological identification in Plato of God and the Idea of Good. But the essential goodness of God is a commonplace of liberal and philosophical theology, from the Stoics to Whittier’s hymn, The Eternal Goodness.) as such? Certainly. But further, no good thing is harmful, is it? I think not. Can what is not harmful harm? By no means. Can that which does not harm do any evil? Not that either. But that which does no evil would not be cause of any evil either? How could it? Once more, is the good beneficent? Yes. It is the cause, then, of welfare? Yes. Then the good is not the cause of all things, but of things that are well it the cause—of things that are ill it is blameless. Entirely so, he said. Neither, then, could God, said I, since he is good, be, as the multitude say, the cause of all things, but for mankind he is the cause of few things, but of many things not the cause.[*](Anticipates the proclamation of the prophet in the final myth, 617 E: αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος. The idea, elaborated in Cleanthes’ hymn to Zeus, may be traced back to the speech of the Homeric Zeus in Odyssey i. 33 ἐξ ἡμεῶν γάπ φασι κάκ’ ἔμμεναι. St. Thomas distinguishes: Deus est auctor mali quod est poena, non autem mali quod est culpa.) For good things are far fewer[*](A pessimistic commoplace more emphasized in the Laws than in the Republic. Cf. Laws 896 E, where the Manichean hypothesis of an evil world-soul is suggested.) with us than evil, and for the good we must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must look for in other things and not in God. What you say seems to me most true, he replied. Then, said I, we must not accept from Homer or any other poet the folly of such error as this about the gods when he says

1. Two urns stand on the floor of the palace of Zeus and are filled with
2. Dooms he allots, one of blessings, the other of gifts that are evil,

1. Now upon evil he chances and now again good is his portion,

1. Hunger devouring drives him, a wanderer over the wide world,

1. Zeus is dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals.

But as to the violation of the oaths[*]( Iliad 4.69 ff.) and the truce by Pandarus, if anyone affirms it to have been brought about by the action of Athena and Zeus, we will not approve, nor that the strife and contention[*](ἔριν τε καὶ κρίσιν is used in Menexenus 237 C of the contest of the gods for Attica. Here it is generally taken of the Theomachy, Iliad xx. 1074, which begins with the summons of the gods to a council by Themis at the command of Zeus. It has also been understood, rather improbably, of the judgement of Paris.) of the gods was the doing of Themis and Zeus; nor again must we permit our youth to hear what Aeschylus says—

1. A god implants the guilty cause in men
2. When he would utterly destroy a house,

as, for example, a body by food and drink and toil, and plants[*](Cf. Laws 765 E.) by the heat of the sun and winds and similar influences—is it not true that the healthiest and strongest is least altered?Certainly.And is it not the soul that is bravest and most intelligent, that would be least disturbed[*](ταράξειε suggests the ἀταραξία of the sage in the later schools.) and altered by any external affection?Yes.And, again, it is surely true of all composite implements, edifices, and habiliments, by parity of reasoning, that those which are well made and in good condition are least liable to be changed by time and other influences.That is so.It is universally[*](πᾶν δή generalizes from the preceding exhaustive enumeration of cases. Cf. 382 E, Parmenides 139 A.) true, then, that that which is in the best state by nature or art or both admits least alteration by something else.So it seems.But God, surely, and everything that belongs to God is in every way in the best possible state.Of course.From this point of view, then, it would be least of all likely that there would be many forms in God.Least indeed.But would he transform and alter himself?Obviously, he said, if he is altered. Then does he change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the worse[*](So Aristotle Met. 1074 b 26.) and to something uglier than himself? It must necessarily, said he, be for the worse if he is changed. For we surely will not say that God is deficient in either beauty or excellence. Most rightly spoken, said I. And if that were his condition, do you think, Adeimantus, that any one god or man would of his own will worsen himself in any way? Impossible, he replied. It is impossible then, said I, even for a god to wish to alter himself, but, as it appears, each of them being the fairest and best possible abides[*](Cf. Tim. 42 E ἔμενεν, which suggested the Neoplatonic and Miltonic paradox that the divine abides even when it goes forth.) for ever simply in his own form. An absolutely necessary conclusion to my thinking. No poet then, I said, my good friend, must be allowed to tell us that

1. The gods, in the likeness of strangers,
2. Many disguises assume as they visit the cities of mortals.

1. for the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream.

Consider, said I; would a god wish to deceive, or lie, by presenting in either word or action what is only appearance? I don’t know, said he. Don’t you know, said I, that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor? What do you mean? he said. This, said I, that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it. I don’t understand yet either. That is because you suspect me of some grand meaning, I said; but what I mean is, that deception in the soul about realities, to have been deceived and to be blindly ignorant and to have and hold the falsehood there, is what all men would least of all accept, and it is in that case that they loathe it most of all. Quite so, he said. But surely it would be most wholly right, as I was just now saying, to describe this as in very truth falsehood—ignorance namely in the soul of the man deceived. For the falsehood in words is a copy[*](Cf. Aristotle De Interp. 1. 12 ἔστι μὲν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολα. Cf. also Cratylus 428 D, 535 E, Laws730 C, Bacon, Of Truth: But it is not the lie that passes through the mind but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt.) of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood. Is not that so? By all means. Essential falsehood, then, is hated not only by gods but by men. I agree. But what of the falsehood in words, when and for whom is it serviceable so as not to merit abhorrence? Will it not be against enemies? And when any of those whom we call friends owing to madness or folly attempts to do some wrong, does it not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine? And also in the fables of which we were just now speaking owing to our ignorance of the truth about antiquity, we liken the false to the true as far as we may and so make it edifying.[*](Cf. Phaedrus 245 A μυρία τῶν παλαιῶν ἔργα κοσμοῦσα τοὺς ἐπιγιγνομένους παιδεύει, Isocrates xii. 149 and Livy’s Preface. For χρήσιμον Cf. Politicus 274 E. We must not infer that Plato is trying to sophisticate away the moral virtue of truth-telling.) We most certainly do, he said. Tell me, then, on which of these grounds falsehood would be serviceable to God. Would he because of his ignorance of antiquity make false likenesses of it? An absurd supposition, that, he said. Then there is no lying poet in God. I think not. Well then, would it be through fear of his enemies that he would lie? Far from it. Would it be because of the folly or madness of his friends? Nay, no fool or madman is a friend of God. Then there is no motive for God to deceive. None. From every point of view[*](Generalizing from the exhaustive classification that precedes.) the divine and the divinity are free from falsehood. By all means.

Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of signs in waking or in dreams.I myself think so, he said, when I hear you say it. You concur then, I said, this as our second norm or canon for speech and poetry about the gods,—that they are neither wizards in shape-shifting nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deed? I concur. Then, though there are many other things that we praise in Homer, this we will not applaud, the sending of the dream by Zeus[*](Hom. Il. 2.1-34. This apparent attribution of falsehood to Zeus was an Homeric problem which some solved by a change of accent from δίδομεν to διδόμεν. Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1462 a 22.) to Agamemnon, nor shall we approve of Aeschylus when his Thetis[*](Cf. Aeschylus Frag. 350. Possibly from the Ὅπλων κπίσις.) avers that Apollo singing at her wedding,

foretold the happy fortunes of her issue

1. Their days prolonged, from pain and sickness free,
2. And rounding out the tale of heaven’s blessings,
3. Raised the proud paean, making glad my heart.
4. And I believed that Phoebus’ mouth divine,
5. Filled with the breath of prophecy, could not lie.
6. But he himself, the singer, himself who sat
7. At meat with us, himself who promised all,
8. Is now himself the slayer of my son.

Concerning the gods then, said I, this is the sort of thing that we must allow or not allow them to hear from childhood up, if they are to honor the gods[*](We may, if we choose, see here a reference to the virtue of piety, which some critics fancifully suppose was eliminated by the Euthyphro. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 58.) and their fathers and mothers, and not to hold their friendship with one another in light esteem. That was our view and I believe it right. What then of this? If they are to be brave, must we not extend our prescription to include also the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death? Or do you suppose that anyone could ever become brave who had that dread in his heart? No indeed, I do not, he replied. And again if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors,[*](For the idea that death is no evil Cf. Apology, in fine, Laws 727 D, 828 D, and 881 A, where, however, the fear of hell is approved as a deterrent.) do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will prefer death to defeat and slavery? By no means. Then it seems we must exercise supervision[*](Cf. 377 B.) also, in the matter of such tales as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise it, since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are destined to be warriors. Yes, we must, he said. Then, said I, beginning with this verse we will expunge everything of the same kind:

1. Liefer were I in the fields up above to be serf to another
2. Tiller of some poor plot which yields him a scanty subsistence,
3. Than to be ruler and king over all the dead who have perished,

1. Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered
2. Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence,

1. Ah me! so it is true that e’en in the dwellings of Hades
2. Spirit there is and wraith, but within there is no understanding,

1. Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms,

1. Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades,
2. Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood,

and:

1. Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul,

1. Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto
2. Fly with a flittermouse shriek when one of them falls from the cluster
3. Whereby they hold to the rock and are clinging the one to the other,
4. Flitted their gibbering ghosts.

Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women,[*](Cf. Plat. Rep. 398e.) and not to the most worthy of them either, and to inferior men, in that those whom we say we are breeding for the guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these.We should be right, said he. Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as,

1. Lying now on his side, and then again on his back,
2. And again on his face,

Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean,

clutching with both hands the sooty dust and strewing it over his head,

1. Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing.

1. Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest,

1. Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy-town
2. I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me,

1. Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest,

1. Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius’ offspring.

Then if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered by laughter we must accept it, much less if gods.Much indeed, he replied. Then we must not accept from Homer such sayings as these either about the gods:

1. Quenchless then was the laughter[*](This laughter of the Homeric gods has been endlessly commented upon. Hegel allegorizes it. Mrs. Browning (Aurora Leigh) says: And all true poets laugh unquenchablyLike Shakespeare and the gods. Proclus, In Rempub. i. 127 Kroll says that it is an expression of the abundance of divine energy. It is a commonplace that the primitive sense of humor of the Homeric gods laughs at the personal deformity of Hephaestus, but they really laugh at his officiousness and the contrast he presents to Hebe. Cf. my note in Class. Phil . xxii. (1927) pp. 222-223.) that rose from the blessed immortals
2. When they beheld Hephaestus officiously puffing and panting.

1. Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers,

1. Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding,

1. Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains,

Yes, well said.But what of this sort of thing?

1. Heavy with wine with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer,

1. When the bounteous tables are standing
2. Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine
3. Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers.

1. Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer.

Deceiving their dear parents.

1. He smote his breast and chided thus his heart,
2. Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured.

1. Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings.

nor shall we think it proper nor admit that Achilles[*](Cf. Iliad xix. 278 ff. But Achilles in Homer is indifferent to the gifts.) himself was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon and again to give up a dead body after receiving payment[*]( Iliad xxiv. 502, 555, 594. But in 560 he does not explicitly mention the ransom.) but otherwise to refuse.It is not right, he said, to commend such conduct. But, for Homer’s sake, said I, I hesitate to say that it is positively impious[*](Cf. 368 B.) to affirm such things of Achilles and to believe them when told by others; or again to believe that he said to Apollo

1. Me thou hast baulked, Far-darter, the most pernicious of all gods,
2. Mightily would I requite thee if only my hands had the power.

This let me give to take with him my hair to the hero, Patroclus,

1. The near-sown seed of gods,
2. Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida’s top
3. Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven,
4. Nor in their life-blood fails[*](Plato was probably thinking of this passage when he wrote the last paragraph of the Critias.) the fire divine.

For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed in our youth great laxity[*](Cf. my note in Class. Phil . vol. xii. (1910) p. 308.) in turpitude.Most assuredly.What type of discourse remains for our definition of our prescriptions and proscriptions?We have declared the right way of speaking about gods and daemons and heroes and that other world.We have.Speech, then, about men would be the remainder.Obviously.It is impossible for us, my friend, to place this here.[*](Or possibly determine this at present. The prohibition which it would beg the question to place here is made explicit in Laws 660 E. Cf. Laws 899 D, and 364 B.)Why?Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets and writers of prose speak wrongly about men in matters of greatest moment, saying that there are many examples of men who, though unjust, are happy, and of just men who are wretched, and that there is profit in injustice if it be concealed, and that justice is the other man’s good and your own loss; and I presume that we shall forbid them to say this sort of thing and command them to sing and fable the opposite. Don’t you think so?Nay, I well know it, he said. Then, if you admit that I am right, I will say that you have conceded the original point of our inquiry? Rightly apprehended, he said. Then, as regards men that speech must be of this kind, that is a point that we will agree upon when we have discovered the nature of justice and the proof that it is profitable to its possessor whether he does or does not appear to be just. Most true, he replied. So this concludes the topic of tales.[*](λόγων here practically means the matter, and λέξεως, which became a technical term for diction, the manner, as Socrates explains when Adeimantus fails to understand.) That of diction, I take it, is to be considered next. So we shall have completely examined both the matter and the manner of speech. And Adeimantus said, I don’t understand what you mean by this. Well, said I, we must have you understand. Perhaps you will be more likely to apprehend it thus. Is not everything that is said by fabulists or poets a narration of past, present, or future things? What else could it be? he said. Do not they proceed[*](Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1449 b 27.) either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected through imitation,[*](All art is essentially imitation for Plato and Aristotle. But imitation means for them not only the portrayal or description of visible and tangible things, but more especially the expression of a mood or feeling, hence the (to a modern) paradox that music is the most imitative of the arts. But Plato here complicates the matter further by sometimes using imitation in the narrower sense of dramatic dialogue as opposed to narration. An attentive reader will easily observe these distinctions. Aristotle’s Poetics makes much use of the ideas and the terminology of the following pages.) or by both? This too, he said, I still need to have made plainer. I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,[*](Socratic urbanity professes that the speaker, not the hearer, is at fault. Cf. Protagoras 340 E, Philebus 23 D.) I said; so like men who are unable to express themselves I won’t try to speak in wholes[*](Plato and Aristotle often contrast the universal and the particular as whole and part. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 52. Though a good style is concrete, it is a mark of linguistic helplessness not to be able to state an idea in general terms. Cf. Locke, Human Understanding, ii. 10. 27: This man is hindered in his discourse for want of words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is therefore forced to make known by an enumeration of the simple ones that compose them.) and universals but will separate off a particular part and by the example of that try to show you my meaning.

Tell me. Do you know the first lines if the Iliad in which the poet says that Chryses implored Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that the king was angry and that Chryses, failing of his request, imprecated curses on the Achaeans in his prayers to the god?I do.You know then that as far as these verses,

1. And prayed unto all the Achaeans,
2. Chiefly to Atreus’ sons, twin leaders who marshalled the people,

and when he had thus spoken the others were of reverent mind and approved, but Agamemnon was angry and bade him depart and not come again lest the scepter and the fillets of the god should not avail him. And ere his daughter should be released, he said, she would grow old in Argos with himself, and he ordered him to be off and not vex him if he wished to get home safe. And the old man on hearing this was frightened and departed in silence, and having gone apart from the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, invoking the appellations of the god, and reminding him of and asking requital for any of his gifts that had found favor whether in the building of temples or the sacrifice of victims. In return for these things he prayed that the Achaeans should suffer for his tears by the god’s shafts. It is in this way, my dear fellow, I said, that without imitation simple narration results. I understand, he said. Understand then, said I, that the opposite of this arises when one removes the words of the poet between and leaves the alternation of speeches. This too I understand, he said, —it is what happens in tragedy. You have conceived me most rightly, I said, and now I think I can make plain to you what I was unable to before, that there is one kind of poetry and tale-telling which works wholly through imitation, as you remarked, tragedy and comedy; and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I presume, in the dithyramb[*](The dithyramb was technically a poem in honor of Bacchus. For its more or less conjectural history cf. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy. Here, however, it is used broadly to designate the type of elaborate Greek lyric which like the odes of Pindar and Bacchylides narrates a myth or legend with little if any dialogue.); and there is again that which employs both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me. I understand now, he said, what you then meant. Recall then also the preceding statement that we were done with the what of speech and still had to consider the ’how.’ I remember. What I meant then was just this, that we must reach a decision whether we are to suffer our poets to narrate as imitators or in part as imitators and in part not, and what sort of things in each case, or not allow them to imitate[*](Again in the special limited sense.) at all. I divine, he said, that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not. Perhaps, said I, and perhaps even more than that.[*](This seems to imply that Plato already had in mind the extension of the discussion in the tenth book to the whole question of the moral effect of poetry and art.) For I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows,[*](Cf. Theaetetus 172 D. But it is very naive to suppose that the sequence of Plato’s argument is not carefully planned in his own mind. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 5.) there lies our course. Well said, he replied. This then, Adeimantus, is the point we must keep in view, do we wish our guardians to be good mimics or not? Or is this also a consequence of what we said before, that each one could practise well only one pursuit and not many, but if he attempted the latter, dabbling in many things, he would fail of distinction in all? Of course it is. And does not the same rule hold for imitation, that the same man is not able to imitate many things well as he can one? No, he is not.

Still less, then, will he be able to combine the practice of any worthy pursuit with the imitation of many things and the quality of a mimic; since, unless I mistake, the same men cannot practise well at once even the two forms of imitation that appear most nearly akin, as the writing of tragedy and comedy[*](At the close of the Symposium Socrates constrains Agathon and Aristophanes to admit that one who has the science (τέχνη) of writing tragedy will also be able to write comedy. There is for Plato no contradiction, since poetry is for him not a science or art, but an inspiration.)? Did you not just now call these two imitations?I did, and you are right in saying that the same men are not able to succeed in both, nor yet to be at once good rhapsodists[*](The rhapsode Ion is a Homeric specialist who cannot interpret other poets. Cf. Ion 533 C.) and actors.True.But neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comedies[*](Cf. Classical Review, vol. xiv. (1900), pp. 201 ff.)—and all these are imitations, are they not?Yes, imitations.And to still smaller coinage[*](Cf. Laws 846 E, Montaigne, Nostre suffisance est detaillée à menues pièces, Pope, Essay on Criticism, 60: One science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human wit.) than this, in my opinion, Adeimantus, proceeds the fractioning of human faculty, so as to be incapable of imitating many things or of doing the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses.Most true, he replied. If, then, we are to maintain our original principle, that our guardians, released from all other crafts, are to be expert craftsmen of civic liberty,[*](Cf. the fine passage in Laws 817 B ἡμεῖς ἐσμεν τραγωδίας αὐτοὶ ποιηταί, [Pindar] apud Plut. 807 C δημιουργὸς εὐνομίας καὶ δίκης.) and pursue nothing else that does not conduce to this, it would not be fitting for these to do nor yet to imitate anything else. But if they imitate they should from childhood up[*](Cf. 386 A.) imitate what is appropriate to them[*](i.e., δημιουργοῖς ἐλευθερίας )—men, that is, who are brave, sober, pious, free and all things of that kind; but things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor yet any other shameful thing, lest from the imitation they imbibe the reality.[*](Cf. 606 B, Laws 656 B, 669 B-C, and Burke, Sublime and Beautiful iv. 4, anticipating James, Psychology ii. pp. 449, 451, and anticipated by Shakespeare’s (Cor. III. ii. 123) By my body’s action teach my mindA most inherent baseness.) Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) nature[*](Cf. my paper on Φύσις, Μελέτη, Ἐπιστήμη, T.A.P.A. vol. xl. (1910) pp. 185 ff.) in the body, the speech, and the thought? Yes, indeed, said he. We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation—still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor. Most certainly not, he replied. Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves. No, not that either.

Nor yet, as it seems, bad men who are cowards and who do the opposite of the things we just now spoke of, reviling and lampooning one another, speaking foul words in their cups or when sober and in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. And I take it they must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must have[*](Cf. Laws 816 D-E.) both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind.Most true, he said. What of this? I said, —are they to imitate smiths and other craftsmen or the rowers of triremes and those who call the time to them or other things connected therewith? How could they, he said, since it will be forbidden them even to pay any attention to such things? Well, then, neighing horses[*](For this rejection of violent realism Cf. Laws 669 C-D. Plato describes exactly what Verhaeren’s admirers approve: often in his rhythm can be heard the beat of hammers, the hard, edged, regular whizzing of wheels, the whirring of looms, the hissing of locomotives; often the wild, restless tumult of the streets, the humming and rumbling of dense masses of people. (Stefan Zweig). So another modern critic celebrates the cry of a baby in a Strauss symphony, the sneers and snarls of his critics in his Helden Leben, the contortions of the Dragon in Wagner’s Siegfried .) and lowing bulls, and the noise of rivers and the roar of the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind—will they imitate these? Nay, they have been forbidden, he said, to be mad or liken themselves to madmen. If, then, I understand your meaning, said I, there is a form of diction and narrative in which the really good and true man would narrate anything that he had to say, and another form unlike this to which the man of the opposite birth and breeding would cleave and which he would tell his story. What are these forms? he said. A man of the right sort, I think, when he comes in the course of his narrative to some word or act of a good man will be willing to impersonate the other in reporting it, and will feel no shame at that kind of mimicry, by preference imitating the good man when he acts steadfastly and sensibly, and less and more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love or drunkenness or any other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he will not wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is inferior,[*](Chaucer drew from a misapplication of Timaeus 29 B or Boethius the opposite moral: Who shall telle a tale after a man,He most reherse, as neighe as ever he can,Everich word, if it be in his charge,All speke he never so rudely and so large;Eke Plato sayeth, who so can him rede,The words most ben cosin to the dede.) except in the few cases where he is doing something good, but will be embarrassed both because he is unpractised in the mimicry of such characters, and also because he shrinks in distaste from molding and fitting himself the types of baser things. His mind disdains them, unless it be for jest.[*](Plato, like Howells and some other modern novelists, would have thought somewhat gross comedy less harmful than the tragedy or romance that insidiously instils false ideals.) Naturally, he said. Then the narrative that he will employ will be the kind that we just now illustrated by the verses of Homer, and his diction will be one that partakes of both, of imitation and simple narration, but there will be a small portion of imitation in a long discourse—or is there nothing in what I say? Yes, indeed,[*](The respondent plays on the double meaning of οὐδὲν λέγεις and replies, Yes indeed you do say something, namely the type and pattern, etc.) he said, that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.

Then, said I, the other kind speaker, the more debased he is the less will he shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing unworthy of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence of many,[*](Cf. Gorgias 487 B, Euthydemus 305 B, Protagoras 323 B.) to imitate all things, including those we just now mentioned—claps of thunder, and the noise of wind and hail and axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and flutes and pan-pipes, and the sounds of all instruments, and the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds; and so his style will depend wholly on imitation in voice and gesture, or will contain but a little of pure narration. That too follows of necessity, he said. These, then, said I, were the two types of diction of which I was aking. There are those two, he replied. Now does not one of the two involve slight variations,[*](Besides its suggestion of change and reaction the word is technical in music for the transition from one harmony to another.) and if we assign a suitable pitch and rhythm to the diction, is not the result that the right speaker speaks almost on the same note and in one cadence—for the changes are slight— and similarly in a rhythm of nearly the same kind? Quite so. But what of the other type? Does it not require the opposite, every kind of pitch and all rhythms, if it too is to have appropriate expression, since it involves manifold forms of variation? Emphatically so. And do all poets and speakers hit upon one type or the other of diction or some blend which they combine of both? They must, he said. What, then, said I, are we to do? Shall we admit all of these into the city, or one of the unmixed types, or the mixed type? If my vote prevails, he said, the unmixed imitator of the good. Nay, but the mixed type also is pleasing, Adeimantus, and far most pleasing to boys and their tutors and the great mob is the opposite of your choice. Most pleasing it is. But perhaps, said I, you would affirm it to be ill-suited to our polity, because there is no twofold or manifold man[*](The reverse of the Periclean ideal. Cf. Thucydides ii. 41.) among us, since every man does one thing. It is not suited. And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in which we shall find the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his cobbling, and the farmer a farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and so of all the rest? True, he said.[*](The famous banishment of Homer, regarded as the prototype of the tragedian. Cf. 568 A-C, 595 B, 605 C, 607 D, Laws 656 C, 817 B)

If a man, then, it seems, who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself[*](Greek idiom achieves an effect impossible to English here, by the shift from the co-ordination of ποιήματα with αὐτός to the treatmnt of it as the object of ἐπιδείξασθαι and the possible double use of the latter as middle with αὐτός and transitive with ποιήματα. Cf. for a less striking example 427 D, Phaedrus 250 B-C.) the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls’ good, should continue to employ the more austere[*](Cf. from a different point of view Arnold’s The Austerity of Poetry.) and less delightful poet and tale-teller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning,[*](Cf. 379 A ff.) when we set out to educate our soldiers.We certainly should do that if it rested with us.And now, my friend, said I, we may say that we have completely finished the part of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be said and how it is to be said. I think so too, he replied. After this, then, said I, comes the manner of song and tunes? Obviously. And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of their character in order to conform to what has already been said? I am afraid that everybody does not include me, laughed Glaucon[*](He laughs at his own mild joke, which Professor Wilamowitz (Platon ii. p. 192) does not understand. Cf. Laws 859 E, Hippias Major 293 A ἢ οὐχ εἷς τῶν ἁπάντων καὶ Ἡρακλῆς ἦν; and in a recent novel, I am afraid everybody does not include me, she smiled.); I cannot sufficiently divine off-hand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion. You certainly, I presume, said I, have sufficient a understanding of this—that the song[*](The complete song includes words, rhythms, and harmony, that is, a pitch system of high and low notes. Harmony is also used technically of the peculiar Greek system of scales or modes. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music.) is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm? Yes, said he, that much. And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed? True, he said. And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.[*](The poets at first composed their own music to fit the words. When, with the further development of music, there arose the practice of distorting the words, as in a mere libretto, it provoked a storm of protest from conservatives in aesthetics and morals.) Of course. But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words. We do not. What, then, are the dirge-like modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician. The mixed Lydian,[*](The modes of Greek music are known to the English reader only from Milton’s allusions, his Lap me in soft Lydian airs and, P. L. i. 549 f., his Anon they move in perfect phalanx to the Dorian moodOf flutes and soft recorders; such as rasiedTo highth of noblest temper heroes old. The adaptation of particualr modes, harmonies, or scales to the expression of particular feelings is something that we are obliged to accept on faith. Plato’s statements here were challenged by some later critics, but the majority believed that there was a connection between modes of music and modes of feeling, as Ruskin and many others have in our day. The hard-headed Epicureans and sceptics denied it, as well as the moral significance of music generally.) he said, and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes. These, then, said I, we must do away with. For they are useless even to women[*](Cf. 387 E.) who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men. Assuredly. But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth. Yes. What, then, are the soft and convivial modes? There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.