Republic

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.