Complete Works (220 page)
I agree.
So, even though we praise many things in Homer, we won’t approve of the dream Zeus sent to Agamemnon, nor of Aeschylus when he makes [b] Thetis say that Apollo sang in prophecy at her wedding:
About the good fortune my children would have,
Free of disease throughout their long lives,
And of all the blessings that the friendship of the gods would bring me,
I hoped that Phoebus’ divine mouth would be free of falsehood,
Endowed as it is with the craft of prophecy.
But the very god who sang, the one at the feast,
The one who said all this, he himself it is
Who killed my son.
14
Whenever anyone says such things about a god, we’ll be angry with him, [c] refuse him a chorus,
15
and not allow his poetry to be used in the education of the young, so that our guardians will be as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be.
I completely endorse these patterns, he said, and I would enact them as laws.
1
. In
Seven Against Thebes
, 592–94, it is said of Amphiaraus that “he did not wish to be believed to be the best but to be it.” The passage continues with the words Glaucon quotes below at 362a–b.
2
. See
Odyssey
xvi.97–98.
3
. The two last quotations are from
Works and Days
232 ff. and
Odyssey
xix.109–13, omitting 110, respectively.
4
. Musaeus was a legendary poet closely associated with the mystery religion of Orphism.
5
.
Works and Days
287–89, with minor alterations.
6
.
Iliad
ix.497–501, with minor alterations.
7
. It is not clear whether Orpheus was a real person or a mythical figure. His fame in Greek myth rests on the poems in which the doctrines of the Orphic religion are set forth.
8
. The quotation is attributed to Simonides, whom Polemarchus cites in Book I.
9
. Archilochus of Paros (c. 756–716
B.C.
) was an iambic and elegiac poet who composed a famous fable about the fox and the hedgehog.
10
. See Hesiod,
Theogony
154–210, 453–506.
11
. The first three quotations are from
Iliad
xxiv.527–32. The sources for the fourth and for the quotation from Aeschylus are unknown. The story of Athena urging Pandarus to break the truce is told in
Iliad
iv.73–126.
12
.
Ody
ssey
xvii.485–86.
13
. Inachus was the father of Io, who was persecuted by Hera because Zeus was in love with her. The source for the part of the story Plato quotes is unknown.
14
. In
Iliad
ii.1–34, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon to promise success if he attacks Troy immediately. The promise is false. The source for the quotation from Aeschylus is unknown.
15
. I.e., deny him the funding necessary to produce his play.
Book III
[386]
Such, then, I said, are the kinds of stories that I think future guardians should and should not hear about the gods from childhood on, if they are to honor the gods and their parents and not take their friendship with one another lightly.
I’m sure we’re right about that, at any rate.
What if they are to be courageous as well? Shouldn’t they be told stories that will make them least afraid of death? Or do you think that anyone [b] ever becomes courageous if he’s possessed by this fear?
No, I certainly don’t.
And can someone be unafraid of death, preferring it to defeat in battle or slavery, if he believes in a Hades full of terrors?
Not at all.
Then we must supervise such stories and those who tell them, and ask them not to disparage the life in Hades in this unconditional way, but rather to praise it, since what they now say is neither true nor beneficial [c] to future warriors.
We must.
Then we’ll expunge all that sort of disparagement, beginning with the following lines:
I would rather labor on earth in service to another,
To a man who is landless, with little to live on,
Than be king over all the dead.
1
and also these:
He feared that his home should appear to gods and men
[d]
Dreadful, dank, and hated even by the gods.
2
and
Alas, there survives in the Halls of Hades
A soul, a mere phantasm, with its wits completely gone.
3
and this:
And he alone could think; the others are flitting shadows.
4
and
The soul, leaving his limbs, made its way to Hades,
Lamenting its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind.
5
and these:
[387]
His soul went below the earth like smoke,
Screeching as it went …
6
and
As when bats in an awful cave
Fly around screeching if one of them falls
From the cluster on the ceiling, all clinging to one another,
So their souls went screeching …
7
We’ll ask Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we delete these [b] passages and all similar ones. It isn’t that they aren’t poetic and pleasing to the majority of hearers but that, the more poetic they are, the less they should be heard by children or by men who are supposed to be free and to fear slavery more than death.
Most certainly.
And the frightening and dreadful names for the underworld must be struck out, for example, “Cocytus” and “Styx,”
8
and also the names for [c] the dead, for example, “those below” and “the sapless ones,” and all those names of things in the underworld that make everyone who hears them shudder. They may be all well and good for other purposes, but we are afraid that our guardians will be made softer and more malleable by such shudders.
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 spears
13
—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 deer
14
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 Hephaestus
16
—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 he 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.