This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[599a]
they cannot
perceive that these are three removes from reality, and easy to produce
without knowledge of the truth. For it is phantoms,1 not realities, that they produce. Or is
there something in their claim, and do good poets really know the things
about which the multitude fancy they speak well?” “We
certainly must examine the matter,” he said. “Do you
suppose, then, that if a man were able to produce both the exemplar and the
semblance, he would be eager to abandon himself to the fashioning of
phantoms2 and set this
in the forefront
[599b]
of his life as the best
thing he had?” “I do not.” “But, I
take it, if he had genuine knowledge of the things he imitates he would far
rather devote himself to real things3
than to the imitation of them, and would endeavor to leave after him many
noble deeds4 and works as memorials of himself, and would be more eager to
be the theme of praise than the praiser.” “I think
so,” he said; “for there is no parity in the honor and
the gain.” “Let us not, then, demand a reckoning5 from Homer
[599c]
or any other of the poets on other matters by
asking them, if any one of them was a physician and not merely an imitator
of a physician's talk, what men any poet, old or new, is reported to have
restored to health as Asclepius did, or what disciples of the medical art he
left after him as Asclepius did his descendants; and let us dismiss the
other arts and not question them about them; but concerning the greatest and
finest things of which Homer undertakes to speak, wars and generalship6
[599d]
and the administration of cities and the
education of men, it surely is fair to question him and ask,
‘Friend Homer, if you are not at the third remove from truth and
reality in human excellence, being merely that creator of phantoms whom we
defined as the imitator, but if you are even in the second place and were
capable of knowing what pursuits make men better or worse in private or
public life, tell us what city was better governed owing to you,7 even as Lacedaemon was because of
Lycurgus,8 and many other cities
[599e]
great and small because of other legislators. But what
city credits you with having been a good legislator and having benefited
them? Italy and Sicily say this of Charondas and we of Solon.9
But who says it of you?’ Will he be able to name any?”
“I think not,” said Glaucon; “at any rate none
is mentioned even by the Homerids themselves.” “Well,
then,
1 Cf. on 598 B.
2 Cf. 598 B.
3 Cf. Petit de Julleville, Hist. lit. francaise vii. p. 233, on the poet Lamartine's desire to be a practical statesman, and ibid.: “Quand on m'apprendrait que le divin Homère a refusé les charges municipales de Smyrne ou de Colophon, je ne croirais jamais qu'il eût pu mieux mériter de la Grèce en administrant son bourg natal qu'en composant l’Iliade et l’Odyssée.“
4 But Cf. Symp. 209 D.
5 For the challenge to the poet to specify his knowledge Cf. Ion 536 E f.
6 Cf. Ion 541 A f.
7 Cf. Gorg. 515 B, Laches 186 B.
8 Cf. Laws 630 D, 632 D, 858 E, Symp. 209 D, Phaedr. 258 B, Minos 318 C, Herod. i. 65-66, Xen.Rep. Lac. 1. 2 and passim,Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus.
9 Cf. Symp. 209 D, Phaedr. 258 B, 278 C, Charm. 155 A, 157 E, Prot. 343 A, Tim. 20 E ff., Herod. i. 29 ff. and 86, ii. 177, v. 113, Aristot.Ath. Pol. v. ff., Diog. Laert. i. 45 ff., Plutarch, Life of Solon,Freeman, The Work and Life of Solon.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.