Republic

Concerning the gods then, said I, this is the sort of thing that we must allow or not allow them to hear from childhood up, if they are to honor the gods and their fathers and mothers, and not to hold their friendship with one another in light esteem. That was our view and I believe it right. What then of this? If they are to be brave, must we not extend our prescription to include also the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death? Or do you suppose that anyone could ever become brave who had that dread in his heart? No indeed, I do not, he replied. And again if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors, do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will prefer death to defeat and slavery? By no means. Then it seems we must exercise supervision also, in the matter of such tales as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise it, since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are destined to be warriors. Yes, we must, he said. Then, said I, beginning with this verse we will expunge everything of the same kind: Liefer were I in the fields up above to be serf to another Tiller of some poor plot which yields him a scanty subsistence, Than to be ruler and king over all the dead who have perished, Aesch. Frag. 350 and this: Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence, Hom. Il. 20.64 and: Ah me! so it is true that e’en in the dwellings of Hades Spirit there is and wraith, but within there is no understanding, Hom. Il. 10.495 and this: Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms, Hom. Il. 23.103 and: Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades, Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood, Hom. Il. 16.856

and: Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul, Hom. Il. 23.100 and: Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto Fly with a flittermouse shriek when one of them falls from the cluster Whereby they hold to the rock and are clinging the one to the other, Flitted their gibbering ghosts. Hom. Od. 24.6-10 We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing to most hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid of slavery than of death. By all means. Then we must further taboo in these matters the entire vocabulary of terror and fear, Cocytus named of lamentation loud, abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, the people of the infernal pit and of the charnel-house, and all other terms of this type, whose very names send a shudder through all the hearers every year. And they may be excellent for other purposes, but we are in fear for our guardians lest the habit of such thrills make them more sensitive and soft than we would have them. And we are right in so fearing. We must remove those things then? Yes. And the opposite type to them is what we must require in speech and in verse? Obviously. And shall we also do away with the wailings and lamentations of men of repute? That necessarily follows, he said, from the other. Consider, said I, whether we shall be right in thus getting rid of them or not. What we affirm is that a good man will not think that for a good man, whose friend he also is, death is a terrible thing. Yes, we say that. Then it would not be for his friend’s sake as if he had suffered something dreadful that he would make lament. Certainly not. But we also say this, that such a one is most of all men sufficient unto himself for a good life and is distinguished from other men in having least need of anybody else. True, he replied. Least of all then to him is it a terrible thing to lose son or brother or his wealth or anything of the sort. Least of all. Then he makes the least lament and bears it most moderately when any such misfortune overtakes him. Certainly.

Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women, and not to the most worthy of them either, and to inferior men, in that those whom we say we are breeding for the guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these. We should be right, said he. Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as, Lying now on his side, and then again on his back, And again on his face, Hom. Il. 24.10-12 and then rising up and Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean, Hom. Il. 24.10-12 nor clutching with both hands the sooty dust and strewing it over his head, nor as weeping and lamenting in the measure and manner attributed to him by the poet; nor yet Priam, near kinsman of the gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung, Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing. Hom. Il. 22.414-415 And yet more than this shall we beg of them at least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying, Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest, Hom. Il. 18.54 and if they will so picture the gods at least not to have the effrontery to present so unlikely a likeness of the supreme god as to make him say: Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy-town I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me, Hom. Il. 22.168 and: Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest, Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius’ offspring. Hom. Il. 16.433-434 For if, dear Adeimantus, our young men should seriously incline to listen to such tales and not laugh at them as unworthy utterances, still less surely would any man be to think such conduct unworthy of himself and to rebuke himself if it occurred to him to do or say anything of that kind, but without shame or restraint full many a dirge for trifles would he chant and many a lament. You say most truly, he replied. But that must not be, as our reasoning but now showed us, in which we must put our trust until someone convinces with a better reason. No, it must not be. Again, they must not be prone to laughter. For ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter his condition provokes a violent reaction. I think so, he said.

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: Quenchless then was the laughter that rose from the blessed immortals When they beheld Hephaestus officiously puffing and panting. Hom. Il. 1.599-600 — we must not accept it on your view. If it pleases you to call it mine, he said; at any rate we must not accept it. But further we must surely prize truth most highly. For if we were right in what we were just saying and falsehood is in very deed useless to gods, but to men useful as a remedy or form of medicine, it is obvious that such a thing must be assigned to physicians and laymen should have nothing to do with it. Obviously, he replied. The rulers then of the city may, if anybody, fitly lie on account of enemies or citizens for the benefit of the state; no others may have anything to do with it, but for a layman to lie to rulers of that kind we shall affirm to be as great a sin, nay a greater, than it is for a patient not to tell physician or an athlete his trainer the truth about his bodily condition, or for a man to deceive the pilot about the ship and the sailors as to the real condition of himself or a fellow-sailor, and how they fare. Most true, he replied. If then the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers, Hom. Od. 17.383-384 he will chastise him for introducing a practice as subversive and destructive of a state as it is of a ship. He will, he said, if deed follows upon word. Again, will our lads not need the virtue of self-control? Of course. And for the multitude are not the main points of self-control these—to be obedient to their rulers and themselves to be rulers over the bodily appetites and pleasures of food, drink, and the rest? I think so. Then, I take it, we will think well said such sayings as that of Homer’s Diomede: Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding, Hom. Il. 4.412 and what follows: Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains, Hom. Il. 3.8 and all similar passages.

Yes, well said. But what of this sort of thing? Heavy with wine with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer, Hom. Il. 1.225 and the lines that follow, are these well—and other impertinences in prose or verse of private citizens to their rulers? They are not well. They certainly are not suitable for youth to hear for the inculcation of self-control. But if from another point of view they yield some pleasure we must not be surprised, or what is your view of it? This, he said. Again, to represent the wisest man as saying that this seems to him the fairest thing in the world, When the bounteous tables are standing Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers. Hom. Od. 9.8-10 —do you think the hearing of that sort of thing will conduce to a young man’s temperance or self-control? or this: Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer. Hom. Od. 12.342 Or to hear how Zeus lightly forgot all the designs which he devised, watching while the other gods slept, because of the excitement of his passions, and was so overcome by the sight of Hera that he is not even willing to go to their chamber, but wants to lie with her there on the ground and says that he is possessed by a fiercer desire than when they first consorted with one another, Deceiving their dear parents. Hom. Il. 14.296 Nor will it profit them to hear of Hephaestus’s fettering Ares and Aphrodite for a like motive. No, by Zeus, he said, I don’t think it will. But any words or deeds of endurance in the face of all odds attributed to famous men are suitable for our youth to see represented and to hear, such as: He smote his breast and chided thus his heart, Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured. Hom. Od. 20.17-18 By all means, he said. It is certain that we cannot allow our men to be acceptors of bribes or greedy for gain. By no means. Then they must not chant: Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings. unknown Nor should we approve Achilles’ attendant Phoenix as speaking fairly when he counselled him if he received gifts for it to defend the Achaeans, but without gifts not to lay aside his wrath;

nor shall we think it proper nor admit that Achilles himself was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon and again to give up a dead body after receiving payment 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 to affirm such things of Achilles and to believe them when told by others; or again to believe that he said to Apollo Me thou hast baulked, Far-darter, the most pernicious of all gods, Mightily would I requite thee if only my hands had the power. Hom. Il. 22.15 And how he was disobedient to the river, who was a god and was ready to fight with him, and again that he said of the locks of his hair, consecrated to her river Spercheius: This let me give to take with him my hair to the hero, Patroclus, Hom. Il. 23.151 who was a dead body, and that he did so we must believe. And again the trailings of Hector’s body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter of the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies, nor will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus the most chaste of men, grandson of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the most sage Cheiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected with two contradictory maladies, the greed that becomes no free man and at the same time overweening arrogance towards gods and men. You are right, he said. Neither, then, said I, must we believe this or suffer it to be said, that Theseus, the son of Poseidon, and Peirithous, the son of Zeus, attempted such dreadful rapes, nor that any other child of a god and hero would have brought himself to accomplish the terrible and impious deeds that they now falsely relate of him. But we must constrain the poets either to deny that these are their deeds or that they are the children of gods, but not to make both statements or attempt to persuade our youth that the gods are the begetters of evil, and that heroes are no better than men. For, as we were saying, such utterances are both impious and false. For we proved, I take it, that for evil to arise from gods is an impossibility. Certainly. And they are furthermore harmful to those that hear them. For every man will be very lenient with his own misdeeds if he is convinced that such are and were the actions of The near-sown seed of gods, Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida’s top Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven, Nor in their life-blood fails the fire divine. Aesch. Niobe Fr.

For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed in our youth great laxity 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. 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. 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 either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected through imitation, or by both? This too, he said, I still need to have made plainer. I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher, I said; so like men who are unable to express themselves I won’t try to speak in wholes 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, And prayed unto all the Achaeans, Chiefly to Atreus’ sons, twin leaders who marshalled the people, Hom. Il. 1.15 the poet himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking. But what follows he delivers as if he were himself Chryses and tries as far as may be to make us feel that not Homer is the speaker, but the priest, an old man. And in this manner he has carried in nearly all the rest of his narration about affairs in Ilion, all that happened in Ithaca, and the entire Odyssey. Quite so, he said. Now, it is narration, is it not, both when he presents the several speeches and the matter between the speeches? Of course. But when he delivers a speech as if he were someone else, shall we not say that he then assimilates thereby his own diction is far as possible to that of the person whom he announces as about to speak? We shall obviously. And is not likening one’s self to another speech or bodily bearing an imitation of him to whom one likens one’s self? Surely. In such case then it appears he and the other poets effect their narration through imitation. Certainly. But if the poet should conceal himself nowhere, then his entire poetizing and narration would have been accomplished without imitation. And lest you may say again that you don’t understand, I will explain to you how this would be done. If Homer, after telling us that Chryses came with the ransom of his daughter and as a suppliant of the Achaeans but chiefly of the kings, had gone on speaking not as if made or being Chryses but still as Homer, you are aware that it would not be imitation but narration, pure and simple. It would have been somewhat in this wise. I will state it without meter for I am not a poet: the priest came and prayed that to them the gods should grant to take Troy and come safely home, but that they should accept the ransom and release his daughter, out of reverence for the god;

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; 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 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. For I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows, 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? 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 and actors. True. But neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comedies—and all these are imitations, are they not? Yes, imitations. And to still smaller coinage 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, 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 imitate what is appropriate to them—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. Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) nature 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 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 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, 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. 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, he said, that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.