Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  And our fear is justified.

  Then such passages are to be struck out?

  Yes.

  And poets must follow the opposite pattern in speaking and writing?

  Clearly.

  Must we also delete the lamentations and pitiful speeches of famous [d] men?

  We must, if indeed what we said before is compelling.

  Consider though whether we are right to delete them or not. We surely say that a decent man doesn’t think that death is a terrible thing for someone decent to suffer—even for someone who happens to be his friend.

  We do say that.

  Then he won’t mourn for him as for someone who has suffered a terrible fate.

  Certainly not.

  We also say that a decent person is most self-sufficient in living well [e] and, above all others, has the least need of anyone else.

  That’s true.

  Then it’s less dreadful for him than for anyone else to be deprived of his son, brother, possessions, or any other such things.

  Much less.

  Then he’ll least give way to lamentations and bear misfortune most quietly when it strikes.

  Certainly.

  We’d be right, then, to delete the lamentations of famous men, leaving them to women (and not even to good women, either) and to cowardly men, so that those we say we are training to guard our city will disdain [388] to act like that.

  That’s right.

  Again, then, we’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to represent Achilles, the son of a goddess, as

  Lying now on his side, now on his back, now again

  On his belly; then standing up to wander distracted

  This way and that on the shore of the unharvested sea.

  Nor to make him pick up ashes in both hands and pour them over his head, weeping and lamenting in the ways he does in Homer. Nor to [b] represent Priam, a close descendant of the gods, as entreating his men and

  Rolling around in dung,

  Calling upon each man by name.9

  And we’ll ask them even more earnestly not to make the gods lament and say:

  Alas, unfortunate that I am, wretched mother of a great son.10 [c]

  But, if they do make the gods do such things, at least they mustn’t dare to represent the greatest of the gods as behaving in so unlikely a fashion as to say:

  Alas, with my own eyes I see a man who is most dear to me

  Chased around the city, and my heart laments

  or

  Woe is me, that Sarpedon, who is most dear to me, should be

  Fated to be killed by Patroclus, the son of Menoetius …11 [d]

  If our young people, Adeimantus, listen to these stories without ridiculing them as not worth hearing, it’s hardly likely that they’ll consider the things described in them to be unworthy of mere human beings like themselves or that they’ll rebuke themselves for doing or saying similar things when misfortune strikes. Instead, they’ll feel neither shame nor restraint but groan and lament at even insignificant misfortunes.

  [e] What you say is completely true.

  Then, as the argument has demonstrated—and we must remain persuaded by it until someone shows us a better one—they mustn’t behave like that.

  No, they mustn’t.

  Moreover, they mustn’t be lovers of laughter either, for whenever anyone indulges in violent laughter, a violent change of mood is likely to follow.

  So I believe.

  Then, if someone represents worthwhile people as overcome by laughter, we won’t approve, and we’ll approve even less if they represent gods [389] that way.

  Much less.

  Then we won’t approve of Homer saying things like this about the gods:

  And unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods

  As they saw Hephaestus limping through the hall.12

  According to your argument, such things must be rejected.

  [b] If you want to call it mine, but they must be rejected in any case.

  Moreover, we have to be concerned about truth as well, for if what we said just now is correct, and falsehood, though of no use to the gods, is useful to people as a form of drug, clearly we must allow only doctors to use it, not private citizens.

  Clearly.

  Then if it is appropriate for anyone to use falsehoods for the good of the city, because of the actions of either enemies or citizens, it is the rulers. But everyone else must keep away from them, because for a private citizen [c] to lie to a ruler is just as bad a mistake as for a sick person or athlete not to tell the truth to his doctor or trainer about his physical condition or for a sailor not to tell the captain the facts about his own condition or that of the ship and the rest of its crew—indeed it is a worse mistake than either of these.

  That’s completely true.

  [d] And if the ruler catches someone else telling falsehoods in the city—

  Any one of the craftsmen,

  Whether a prophet, a doctor who heals the sick, or a maker of spears13

  —he’ll punish him for introducing something as subversive and destructive to a city as it would be to a ship.

  He will, if practice is to follow theory.

  What about moderation? Won’t our young people also need that?

  Of course.

  And aren’t these the most important aspects of moderation for the majority of people, namely, to obey the rulers and to rule the pleasures of drink, sex, and food for themselves? [e]

  That’s my opinion at any rate.

  Then we’ll say that the words of Homer’s Diomedes are well put:

  Sit down in silence, my friend, and be persuaded by me.

  and so is what follows:

  The Achaeans, breathing eagerness for battle,

  Marched in silence, fearing their commanders.

  and all other such things.

  Those are well put.

  But what about this?

  Wine-bibber, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer14

  and the rest, is it—or any other headstrong words spoken in prose or poetry by private citizens against their rulers—well put? [390]

  No, they aren’t.

  I don’t think they are suitable for young people to hear—not, in any case, with a view to making them moderate. Though it isn’t surprising that they are pleasing enough in other ways. What do you think?

  The same as you.

  What about making the cleverest man say that the finest thing of all is when

  The tables are well laden

  With bread and meat, and the winebearer [b]

  Draws wine from the mixing bowl and pours it in the cups.

  or

  Death by starvation is the most pitiful fate.15

  Do you think that such things make for self-control in young people? Or what about having Zeus, when all the other gods are asleep and he alone [c] is awake, easily forget all his plans because of sexual desire and be so overcome by the sight of Hera that he doesn’t even want to go inside but wants to possess her there on the ground, saying that his desire for her is even greater than it was when—without their parents’ knowledge—they were first lovers? Or what about the chaining together of Ares and Aphrodite by Hephaestus16—also the result of sexual passion?

  No, by god, none of that seems suitable to me.

  But if, on the other hand, there are words or deeds of famous men, who [d] are exhibiting endurance in the face of everything, surely they must be seen or heard. For example,

  He struck his chest and spoke to his heart:

  “Endure, my heart, you’ve suffered more shameful things than this.”17

  They certainly must.

  Now, we mustn’t allow our men to be money-lovers or to be bribable with gifts.

  [e] Certainly not.

  Then the poets mustn’t sing to them:

  Gifts persuade gods, and gifts persuade revered kings.18

  Nor must Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, be praised as speaking with moderation when h
e advises him to take the gifts and defend the Achaeans, but not to give up his anger without gifts.19 Nor should we think such things to be worthy of Achilles himself. Nor should we agree that he was such a money-lover that he would accept the gifts of Agamemnon or [391] release the corpse of Hector for a ransom but not otherwise.

  It certainly isn’t right to praise such things.

  It is only out of respect for Homer, indeed, that I hesitate to say that it is positively impious to accuse Achilles of such things or to believe others who say them. Or to make him address Apollo in these words:

  You’ve injured me, Farshooter, most deadly of the gods;

  And I’d punish you, if I had the power.20

  Or to say that he disobeyed the river—a god—and was ready to fight it, or that he consecrated hair to the dead Patroclus, which was already [b] consecrated to a different river, Spercheius. It isn’t to be believed that he did any of these. Nor is it true that he dragged the dead Hector around the tomb of Patroclus or massacred the captives on his pyre.21 So we’ll deny that. Nor will we allow our people to believe that Achilles, who was [c] the son of a goddess and of Peleus (the most moderate of men and the grandson of Zeus) and who was brought up by the most wise Chiron, was so full of inner turmoil as to have two diseases in his soul—slavishness accompanied by the love of money, on the one hand, and arrogance towards gods and humans, on the other.

  That’s right.

  We certainly won’t believe such things, nor will we allow it to be said that Theseus, the son of Posidon, and Pirithous, the son of Zeus, engaged in terrible kidnappings,22 or that any other hero and son of a god dared [d] to do any of the terrible and impious deeds that they are now falsely said to have done. We’ll compel the poets either to deny that the heroes did such things or else to deny that they were children of the gods. They mustn’t say both or attempt to persuade our young people that the gods bring about evil or that heroes are no better than humans. As we said earlier, these things are both impious and untrue, for we demonstrated [e] that it is impossible for the gods to produce bad things.23 Of course.

  Moreover, these stories are harmful to people who hear them, for everyone will be ready to excuse himself when he’s bad, if he is persuaded that similar things both are being done now and have been done in the past by

  Close descendants of the gods,

  Those near to Zeus, to whom belongs

  The ancestral altar high up on Mount Ida,

  In whom the blood of daemons has not weakened.24

  For that reason, we must put a stop to such stories, lest they produce in the youth a strong inclination to do bad things. [392]

  Absolutely.

  Now, isn’t there a kind of story whose content we haven’t yet discussed? So far we’ve said how one should speak about gods, heroes, daemons, and things in Hades.

  We have.

  Then what’s left is how to deal with stories about human beings, isn’t it?

  Obviously.

  But we can’t settle that matter at present.

  Why not?

  Because I think we’ll say that what poets and prose-writers tell us about the most important matters concerning human beings is bad. They say [b] that many unjust people are happy and many just ones wretched, that injustice is profitable if it escapes detection, and that justice is another’s good but one’s own loss. I think we’ll prohibit these stories and order the poets to compose the opposite kind of poetry and tell the opposite kind of tales. Don’t you think so?

  I know so.

  But if you agree that what I said is correct, couldn’t I reply that you’ve agreed to the very point that is in question in our whole discussion?

  And you’d be right to make that reply.

  Then we’ll agree about what stories should be told about human [c] beings only when we’ve discovered what sort of thing justice is and how by nature it profits the one who has it, whether he is believed to be just or not.

  That’s very true.

  This concludes our discussion of the content of stories. We should now, I think, investigate their style, for we’ll then have fully investigated both what should be said and how it should be said.

  I don’t understand what you mean, Adeimantus responded.

  But you must, I said. Maybe you’ll understand it better if I put it this [d] way. Isn’t everything said by poets and storytellers a narrative about past, present, or future events?

  What else could it be?

  And aren’t these narratives either narrative alone, or narrative through imitation, or both?

  I need a clearer understanding of that as well.

  I seem to be a ridiculously unclear teacher. So, like those who are incompetent at speaking, I won’t try to deal with the matter as a whole, but I’ll take up a part and use it as an example to make plain what I want to say. [e] Tell me, do you know the beginning of the Iliad, where the poet tells us that Chryses begs Agamemnon to release his daughter, that Agamemnon harshly rejects him, and that, having failed, Chryses prays to the god [393] against the Achaeans?

  I do.

  You know, then, that up to the lines:

  And he begged all the Achaeans

  But especially the two sons of Atreus, the commanders of the army,25

  the poet himself is speaking and doesn’t attempt to get us to think that the speaker is someone other than himself. After this, however, he speaks as if he were Chryses and tries as far as possible to make us think that the speaker isn’t Homer but the priest himself—an old man. And he [b] composes pretty well all the rest of his narrative about events in Troy, Ithaca, and the whole Odyssey in this way.

  That’s right.

  Now, the speeches he makes and the parts between them are both narrative? Of course.

  But when he makes a speech as if he were someone else, won’t we say that he makes his own style as much like that of the indicated speaker [c] as possible?

  We certainly will.

  Now, to make oneself like someone else in voice or appearance is to imitate the person one makes oneself like.

  Certainly.

  In these passages, then, it seems that he and the other poets effect their narrative through imitation.

  That’s right.

  If the poet never hid himself, the whole of his poem would be narrative [d] without imitation. In order to prevent you from saying again that you don’t understand, I’ll show you what this would be like. If Homer said that Chryses came with a ransom for his daughter to supplicate the Achaeans, especially the kings, and after that didn’t speak as if he had become Chryses, but still as Homer, there would be no imitation but rather simple narrative. It would have gone something like this—I’ll speak without meter since I’m no poet: “And the priest came and prayed that the gods would allow them to capture Troy and be safe afterwards, that they’d accept the [e] ransom and free his daughter, and thus show reverence for the god. When he’d said this, the others showed their respect for the priest and consented. But Agamemnon was angry and ordered him to leave and never to return, lest his priestly wand and the wreaths of the god should fail to protect him. He said that, before freeing the daughter, he’d grow old in Argos by her side. He told Chryses to go away and not to make him angry, if he wanted to get home safely. When the old man heard this, he was frightened [394] and went off in silence. But when he’d left the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, calling him by his various titles and reminding him of his own services to him. If any of those services had been found pleasing, whether it was the building of temples or the sacrifice of victims, he asked in return that the arrows of the god should make the Achaeans pay for his tears.” [b] That is the way we get simple narrative without imitation.

  I understand.

  Then also understand that the opposite occurs when one omits the words between the speeches and leaves the speeches by themselves.

  I understand that too. Tragedies are like that.

  [c] That’s absolutely right. And now I think that I c
an make clear to you what I couldn’t before. One kind of poetry and story-telling employs only imitation—tragedy and comedy, as you say. Another kind employs only narration by the poet himself—you find this most of all in dithyrambs. A third kind uses both—as in epic poetry and many other places, if you follow me.

  Now I understand what you were trying to say.

  Remember, too, that before all that we said that we had dealt with what must be said in stories, but that we had yet to investigate how it must be said.

  Yes, I remember.

  [d] Well, this, more precisely, is what I meant: We need to come to an agreement about whether we’ll allow poets to narrate through imitation, and, if so, whether they are to imitate some things but not others—and what things these are, or whether they are not to imitate at all.

  I divine that you’re looking into the question of whether or not we’ll allow tragedy and comedy into our city.

  Perhaps, and perhaps even more than that, for I myself really don’t know yet, but whatever direction the argument blows us, that’s where we must go.

  Fine.

  Then, consider, Adeimantus, whether our guardians should be imitators [e] or not. Or does this also follow from our earlier statement that each individual would do a fine job of one occupation, not of many, and that if he tried the latter and dabbled in many things, he’d surely fail to achieve distinction in any of them?

  He would indeed.

  Then, doesn’t the same argument also hold for imitation—a single individual can’t imitate many things as well as he can imitate one?

  No, he can’t.

  Then, he’ll hardly be able to pursue any worthwhile way of life while [395] at the same time imitating many things and being an imitator. Even in the case of two kinds of imitation that are thought to be closely akin, such as tragedy and comedy, the same people aren’t able to do both of them well. Did you not just say that these were both imitations?

  I did, and you’re quite right that the same people can’t do both.

  Nor can they be both rhapsodes and actors.

  True.