[391a]
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 impious1 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. 22.152
[391b]
And how he was disobedient to the
river,3 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. 23.1514 who was a
dead body, and that he did so we must believe. And again the trailings5 of Hector's body round the grave of Patroclus and the
slaughter6 of the living captives upon his pyre,
all these we will affirm to be lies,
[391c]
nor
will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and
of Peleus the most chaste7 of men,
grandson8 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,
[391d]
and Peirithous, the son of Zeus, attempted such dreadful rapes,9 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.
[391e]
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 fails10 the fire
divine.
”Aesch. Niobe Fr.For which cause we must put
down such fables, lest they breed
1 Cf. 368 B.
2 Professor Wilamowitz uses ὀλοώτατε to prove that Apollo was a god of destruction. But Menelaus says the same of Zeus in Iliad iii. 365. Cf. Class. Phil. vol. iv. (1909） p. 329.
3 Scamander. Iliad 21.130-132.
4 Cf. Proclus, p. 146 Kroll. Plato exaggerates to make his case. The locks were vowed to Spercheius on the condition of Achilles' return. In their context the words are innocent enough.
7 Proverbially. Cf. Pindar Nem. iv. 56, v. 26, Aristophanes Clouds 1063, and my note on Horace iii. 7. 17.
8 Zeus, Aeacus, Peleus. For the education of Achilles by Cheiron Cf. Iliad xi. 832, Pindar Nem. iii., Euripides, I. A. 926-927, Plato, Hippias Minor 371 D.
9 Theseus was assisted by Perithous in the rape of Helen and joined Perithous in the attempt to abduct Persephone. Theseus was the theme of epics and of lost plays by Sophocles and Euripides.
10 Plato was probably thinking of this passage when he wrote the last paragraph of the Critias.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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