Republic

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.