Complete Works (221 page)

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 can 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.

Indeed, not even the same actors are used for tragedy and comedy. Yet [b] all these are imitations, aren’t they?

They are.

And human nature, Adeimantus, seems to me to be minted in even smaller coins than these, so that it can neither imitate many things well nor do the actions themselves, of which those imitations are likenesses.

That’s absolutely true.

Then, if we’re to preserve our first argument, that our guardians must be kept away from all other crafts so as to be the craftsmen of the city’s freedom, and be exclusively that, and do nothing at all except what contributes [c] to it, they must neither do nor imitate anything else. If they do imitate, they must imitate from childhood what is appropriate for them, namely, people who are courageous, self-controlled, pious, and free, and their actions. They mustn’t be clever at doing or imitating slavish or shameful actions, lest from enjoying the imitation, they come to enjoy the reality. Or haven’t you noticed that imitations practiced from youth become part [d] of nature and settle into habits of gesture, voice, and thought?

I have indeed.

Then we won’t allow those for whom we profess to care, and who must grow into good men, to imitate either a young woman or an older one, or one abusing her husband, quarreling with the gods, or bragging because she thinks herself happy, or one suffering misfortune and possessed by sorrows and lamentations, and even less one who is ill, in love, or in labor. [e]

That’s absolutely right.

Nor must they imitate either male or female slaves doing slavish things.

No, they mustn’t.

Nor bad men, it seems, who are cowards and are doing the opposite of what we described earlier, namely, libelling and ridiculing each other, using shameful language while drunk or sober, or wronging themselves and others, whether in word or deed, in the various other ways that are typical of such people. They mustn’t become accustomed to making
[396]
themselves like madmen in either word or deed, for, though they must know about mad and vicious men and women, they must neither do nor imitate anything they do.

That’s absolutely true.

Should they imitate metal workers or other craftsmen, or those who row in triremes, or their time-keepers, or anything else connected with ships? [b]

How could they, since they aren’t to concern themselves with any of those occupations?

And what about this? Will they imitate neighing horses, bellowing bulls, roaring rivers, the crashing sea, thunder, or anything of that sort?

They are forbidden to be mad or to imitate mad people.

If I understand what you mean, there is one kind of style and narrative that someone who is really a gentleman would use whenever he wanted to narrate something, and another kind, unlike this one, which his opposite by nature and education would favor, and in which he would [c] narrate.

Which styles are those?

Well, I think that when a moderate man comes upon the words or actions of a good man in his narrative, he’ll be willing to report them as if he were that man himself, and he won’t be ashamed of that kind of imitation. He’ll imitate this good man most when he’s acting in a faultless and [d] intelligent manner, but he’ll do so less, and with more reluctance, when the good man is upset by disease, sexual passion, drunkenness, or some other misfortune. When he comes upon a character unworthy of himself, however, he’ll be unwilling to make himself seriously resemble that inferior character—except perhaps for a brief period in which he’s doing something good. Rather he’ll be ashamed to do something like that, both because he’s unpracticed in the imitation of such people and because he can’t stand to shape and mold himself according to a worse pattern. He despises this [e] in his mind, unless it’s just done in play.

That seems likely.

He’ll therefore use the kind of narrative we described in dealing with the Homeric epics a moment ago. His style will participate both in imitation and in the other kind of narrative, but there’ll be only a little bit of imitation in a long story? Or is there nothing in what I say?

That’s precisely how the pattern for such a speaker must be.