Republic

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,

Hom. Il. 24.527-8 and to whomsoever Zeus gives of both commingled—

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

Hom. Il. 24.530 but the man for whom he does not blend the lots, but to whom he gives unmixed evil—

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

Hom. Il. 24.532 nor will we tolerate the saying that

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

[*](The line is not found in Homer, nor does Plato explicitly say that it is. Zeus is dispenser of war in Hom. Il. 4.84.)

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,

Aesch. [*](For the idea, quem deus vult perdere dementat prius, cf. Theognis 405, Schmidt, Ethik d. Griechen, i. pp. 235 and 247, and Jebb on Sophocles Antigone 620-624.) but if any poets compose a Sorrows of Niobe, the poem that contains these iambics, or a tale of the Pelopidae or of Troy, or anything else of the kind, we must either forbid them to say that these woes are the work of God, or they must devise some such interpretation as we now require, and must declare that what God did was righteous and good, and they were benefited[*](Plato’s doctrine that punishment is remedial must apply to punishments inflicted by the gods. Cf. Protagoras 324 B, Gorgias 478 E, 480 A, 505 B, 525 B, 590 A-B. Yet there are some incurables. Cf. 615 E.) by their chastisement. But that they were miserable who paid the penalty, and that the doer of this was God, is a thing that the poet must not be suffered to say; if on the other hand he should say that for needing chastisement the wicked were miserable and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that we must allow. But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evil to anyone, we must contend in every way that neither should anyone assert this in his own city if it is to be well governed, nor anyone hear it, neither younger nor older, neither telling a story in meter or without meter; for neither would the saying of such things, if they are said, be holy, nor would they be profitable to us or concordant with themselves.I cast my vote with yours for this law, he said, and am well pleased with it. This, then, said I, will be one of the laws and patterns concerning the gods[*](Minucius Felix says of Plato’s theology, Octav. chap. xix: Platoni apertior de deo et rebus ipsis et nominibus oratio est et quae tota esset caelestis nisi persuasionis civilis nonnunquam admixtione sordesceret.) to which speakers and poets will be required to conform, that God is not the cause of all things, but only of the good. And an entirely satisfactory one, he said. And what of this, the second. Do you think that God is a wizard and capable of manifesting himself by design, now in one aspect, now in another, at one time[*](The two methods, (1) self-transformation, and (2) production of illusions in our minds, answer broadly to the two methods of deception distinguished in the Sophist 236 C.) himself changing and altering his shape in many transformations and at another deceiving us and causing us to believe such things about him; or that he is simple and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form? I cannot say offhand, he replied. But what of this: If anything went out from[*](Cf. Tim. 50 B, Cratylus 439 E. Aristotle, H. A. i. 1. 32, applies it to biology: τὸ γενναῖόν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ἐξιστάμενον ἐκ τῆς αὑτοῦ φύσεως. Plato’s proof from the idea of perfection that God is changeless has little in common with the Eleatic argument that pure being cannot change.) its own form, would it not be displaced and changed, either by itself or by something else? Necessarily. Is it not true that to be altered and moved[*](The Theaetetus explicitly distinguishes two kinds of motion, qualitative change and motion proper (181 C-D), but the distinction is in Plato’s mind here and in Cratylus 439 E.) by something else happens least to things that are in the best condition,