(388) even to women who are good for anything), or to men of a baser sort, that those who are being educated by us to be the defenders of their country may scorn to do the like. That will be very right. Then we will once more entreat Homer and the other poets not to depict Achilles 8 , who is the son of a goddess, first lying on his side, then on his back, and then on his face; then starting up and sailing in a frenzy along the shores of the barren sea; now taking the sooty ashes in both his hands 9 and pouring them over his head, or weeping and wailing in the various modes which Homer has delineated. Nor should he describe Priam the kinsman of the gods as praying and beseeching, ‘Rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name 10 .’ Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to introduce the gods lamenting and saying, ‘Alas! my misery! Alas! that I bore the bravest to my sorrow 11 .’ But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not dare so completely to misrepresent the greatest of the gods, as to make him say— ‘O heavens! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine chased round and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful 12 .’ Or again:— ‘Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of

(10) He like the blessed Gods his friends rever’d,

But reckon’d others men of no account.

Homer, too, especially deserves to be praised for calling a king the shepherd of the people . For being a friend to that government in which the rulers are few, he evinced by this epithet that the rest of men are cattle. To beans it is requisite to be hostile, as being the leaders of decision by lot; for by these men were allotted the administration of affairs. Again, empire should be the object of desire: for they proclaim that it is better to be one day a bull, than to be an ox for ever. That the legal institutes of others are laudable; but that they should be exhorted to use those which are known to themselves. In one word, Ninon showed that their philosophy was a conspiracy against the multitude, and therefore exhorted them not to hear the counsellors, but to consider that they would never have been admitted into the assembly, if the council of the Pythagoreans had been approved by the session of a thousand men; so that it was not fit to suffer those to speak, who prevented to the utmost of their power others from being heard. He observed, therefore, that they should consider the right hand which was rejected by the Pythagoreans, as hostile to them, when they gave their suffrages by an extension of the hands, or calculated the number of the votes. That they should also consider it to be a disgraceful circumstance, that they who conquered thirty myriads of men at the river Tracis, should be vanquished by a thousandth part of the same number through sedition in the city itself. In short Ninon so exasperated his hearers by his calumnies, that in a few days after, a great multitude assembled together intending to attack the Pythagoreans as they were sacrificing to the Muses in a house near to the temple of Apollo. The Pythagoreans, however, foreseeing that this would take place, fled to an inn; but Democedes, with those that had arrived at puberty, withdrew to Platea. And those that had dissolved the laws made a decree in which they accused Democedes of compelling the younger part of the community to the possession of empire, and proclaimed by a cryer that thirty talents should be given to any one who destroyed him. An engagement also taking place, and Theages having vanquished Democedes in that contest, they distributed to him the thirty talents which the city had promised. But as the city, and the whole region were involved in many evils, the exiles were brought to judgment, and the power of decision being given to three cities, viz. to the Tarentines, Metapontines, and the Caulonians, those that were sent by them to determine the cause were corrupted by money, as we learn from the chronicles of the Crotonians. Hence the Crotonians condemned by their own decision those that were accused, to exile. In consequence, too, of this decision, and the authority which it conferred on them, they expelled all those from the city, who were dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs, and at the same time banished all their families, asserting that it was not fit to be impious, and that children ought not to be divulsed from their parents. They likewise abolished loans, and made the land to be undivided.

(391) Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved. Loving Homer as I do 29 , I hardly like to say that in attributing these feelings to Achilles, or in believing that they are truly attributed to him, he is guilty of downright impiety. As little can I believe the narrative of his insolence to Apollo, where he says, ‘Thou hast wronged me, O far-darter, most abominable of deities. Verily I would be even with thee, if I had only the power 30 ;’ or his insubordination to the river-god 31 , on whose divinity he is ready to lay hands; or his offering to the dead Patroclus of his own hair 32 , which had been previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius, and that he actually performed this vow; or that he dragged Hector round the tomb of Patroclus 33 , and slaughtered the captives at the pyre 34 ; of all this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron’s pupil, the son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in descent from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men. You are quite right, he replied. And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale of Theseus son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous

(388) men to me, subdued at the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius 13 .’ For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as they ought, hardly will any of them deem that he himself, being but a man, can be dishonoured by similar actions; neither will he rebuke any inclination which may arise in his mind to say and do the like. And instead of having any shame or self-control, he will be always whining and lamenting on slight occasions. Yes, he said, that is most true. Yes, I replied; but that surely is what ought not to be, as the argument has just proved to us; and by that proof we must abide until it is disproved by a better. It ought not to be. Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction. So I believe. Then persons of worth, even if only mortal men, must not be represented as overcome by laughter, and still less must such a representation of the gods be allowed. Still less of the gods, as you say, he replied. Then we shall not suffer such an expression to be used about the gods as that of Homer when he describes how ‘Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods, when they saw Hephaestus bustling about the mansion 14 .’ On your views, we must not admit them. On my views, if you like to father them on me; that we

(441) for in this verse Homer has clearly supposed the power which reasons about the better and worse to be different from the unreasoning anger which is rebuked by it. Very true, he said. And so, after much tossing, we have reached land, and are fairly agreed that the same principles which exist in the State exist also in the individual, and that they are three in number. Exactly. Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the same way, and in virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise? Certainly. Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the State constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the State and the individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues? Assuredly. And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just in the same way in which the State is just? That follows, of course. We cannot but remember that the justice of the State consisted in each of the three classes doing the work of its own class? We are not very likely to have forgotten, he said. We must recollect that the individual in whom the several qualities of his nature do their own work will be just, and will do his own work? Yes, he said, we must remember that too. And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally? Certainly. And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with noble words and lessons, and moderating and

(383) Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own. You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type or form in which we should write and speak about divine things. The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way. I grant that. Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials ‘Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to be long, and to know no sickness. And when he had spoken of my lot as in all things blessed of heaven he raised a note of triumph and cheered my soul. And I thought that the word of Phoebus, being divine and full of prophecy, would not fail. And now he himself who uttered the strain, he who was present at the banquet, and who said this—he it is who has slain my son 15 .’ These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them. I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make them my laws.

(378) Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is far from doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises his father when he does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be following the example of the first and greatest among the gods. I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are quite unfit to be repeated. Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one another, for they are not true. No, we shall never mention the battles of the giants, or let them be embroidered on garments; and we shall be silent about the innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling children; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose for them in a similar spirit 9 . But the narrative of Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and all the battles of the gods in Homer— these tales must not be admitted into our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and

(468) Certainly. But the hero who has distinguished himself, what shall be done to him? In the first place, he shall receive honour in the army from his youthful comrades; every one of them in succession shall crown him. What do you say? I approve. And what do you say to his receiving the right hand of fellowship? To that too, I agree. But you will hardly agree to my next proposal. What is your proposal? That he should kiss and be kissed by them. Most certainly, and I should be disposed to go further, and say: Let no one whom he has a mind to kiss refuse to be kissed by him while the expedition lasts. So that if there be a lover in the army, whether his love be youth or maiden, he may be more eager to win the prize of valour. Capital, I said. That the brave man is to have more wives than others has been already determined: and he is to have first choices in such matters more than others, in order that he may have as many children as possible? Agreed. Again, there is another manner in which, according to Homer, brave youths should be honoured; for he tells how Ajax 7 , after he had distinguished himself in battle, was rewarded with long chines, which seems to be a compliment appropriate to a hero in the flower of his age, being not only a tribute of honour but also a very strengthening thing. Most true, he said. Then in this, I said, Homer shall be our teacher; and we too, at sacrifices and on the like occasions, will honour the brave according to the measure of their valour, whether men or women, with hymns and those other distinctions which we were mentioning; also with

(468) ‘seats of precedence, and meats and full cups 8 ;’ and in honouring them, we shall be at the same time training them. That, he replied, is excellent. Yes, I said; and when a man dies gloriously in war shall we not say, in the first place, that he is of the golden race? To be sure. Nay, have we not the authority of Hesiod for affirming that when they are dead ‘They are holy angels upon the earth, authors of good, averters of evil, the guardians of speech-gifted men’? 9 Yes; and we accept his authority. We must learn of the god how we are to order the sepulture of divine and heroic personages, and what is to be their special distinction; and we must do as he bids? By all means. And in ages to come we will reverence them and kneel before their sepulchres as at the graves of heroes. And not only they but any who are deemed pre-eminently good, whether they die from age, or in any other way, shall be admitted to the same honours. That is very right, he said. Next, how shall our soldiers treat their enemies? What about this? In what respect do you mean? First of all, in regard to slavery? Do you think it right that Hellenes should enslave Hellenic States, or allow others to enslave them, if they can help? Should not their custom be to spare them, considering the danger which there is

(606) Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any of the eulogists of Homer declaring that he has been the educator of Hellas, and that he is profitable for education and for the ordering of human things, and that you should take him up again and again and get to know him and regulate your whole life according to him, we may love and honour those who say these things—they are excellent people, as far as their lights extend; and we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers; but we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State. That is most true, he said. And now since we have reverted to the subject of poetry, let this our defence serve to show the reasonableness of our former judgment in sending away out of our State an art having the tendencies which we have described; for reason constrained us. But that she may not impute to us any harshness or want of politeness, let us tell her that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of which there are many proofs, such as the saying of ‘the yelping hound howling at her lord,’ or of one ‘mighty in

(377) for they are necessarily of the same type, and there is the same spirit in both of them. Very likely, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would term the greater. Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of the poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of mankind. But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them? A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie. But when is this fault committed? Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes,—as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original. Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blameable; but what are the stories which you mean? First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too,—I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated on him 8 . The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and they should sacrifice not a common [Eleusinian] pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; and then the number of the hearers will be very few indeed. Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.

(335) Then if a man says that justice consists in the repayment of debts, and that good is the debt which a just man owes to his friends, and evil the debt which he owes to his enemies,—to say this is not wise; for it is not true, if, as has been clearly shown, the injuring of another can be in no case just. I agree with you, said Polemarchus. Then you and I are prepared to take up arms against any one who attributes such a saying to Simonides or Bias or Pittacus, or any other wise man or seer? I am quite ready to do battle at your side, he said. Shall I tell you whose I believe the saying to be? Whose? I believe that Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenias the Theban, or some other rich and mighty man, who had a great opinion of his own power, was the first to say that justice is ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.’ Most true, he said. Yes, I said; but if this definition of justice also breaks down, what other can be offered? Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made an attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken at the sight of him. He roared out to the whole company: What folly, Socrates, has taken possession of you all?

(327) I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess 1 ; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait. I turned round, and asked him where his master was. There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait. Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession. Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city. You are not far wrong, I said. But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are? Of course. And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are. May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go? But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said. Certainly not, replied Glaucon. Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.

(600) who loved to associate with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the order which was named after him? Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when he was alive? Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind—if he had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator—can you imagine, I say, that he would not have had many followers, and been honoured and loved by them? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of Ceos, and a host of others, have only to whisper to their contemporaries: ‘You will never be able to manage either your own house or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers of education’—and this ingenious device of theirs has such an effect in making men love them that their companions all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go about as rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind virtuous? Would they not have been as unwilling to part with them as with gold, and have compelled them to stay

(405) a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more disgraceful? Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful. Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace? Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to diseases. Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well

(390) awake, lay devising plans, but forgot them all in a moment through his lust, and was so completely overcome at the sight of Here that he would not even go into the hut, but wanted to lie with her on the ground, declaring that he had never been in such a state of rapture before, even when they first met one another ‘Without the knowledge of their parents 23 ;’ or that other tale of how Hephaestus, because of similar goings on, cast a chain around Ares and Aphrodite 24 ? Indeed, he said, I am strongly of opinion that they ought not to hear that sort of thing. But any deeds of endurance which are done or told by famous men, these they ought to see and hear; as, for example, what is said in the verses, ‘He smote his breast, and thus reproached his heart, Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured 25 !’ Certainly, he said. In the next place, we must not let them be receivers of gifts or lovers of money. Certainly not. Neither must we sing to them of ‘Gifts persuading gods, and persuading reverend kings 26 .’ Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to have given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take the gifts of the Greeks and assist them 27 ; but that without a gift he should not lay aside his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge Achilles himself to have been such a lover of money that he took Agamemnon’s gifts, or that when he had received payment he restored the dead body of Hector, but that without payment he was unwilling to do so 28 .

(362) ought to seem only, and not to be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live with a view to appearances—he wants to be really unjust and not to seem only:— ‘His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent counsels.’ 2 In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice; and at every contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.

(380) ‘God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.’ And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe—the subject of the tragedy in which these iambic verses occur—or of the house of Pelops, or of the Trojan war or on any similar theme, either we must not permit him to say that these are the works of God, or if they are of God, he must devise some explanation of them such as we are seeking; he must say that God did what was just and right, and they were the better for being punished; but that those who are punished are miserable, and that God is the author of their misery—the poet is not to be permitted to say; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse or prose by any one whether old or young in any well-ordered commonwealth. Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious. I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my assent to the law. Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform,—that God is not the author of all things, but of good only. That will do, he said.

(379) Assuredly. Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him. That appears to me to be most true, he said. Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly of saying that two casks ‘Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of evil lots 10 ,’ and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two ‘Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’ but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill, ‘Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’ And again— ‘Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’ And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties, which was really the work of Pandarus 11 , was brought about by Athene and Zeus, or that the strife and contention of the gods was instigated by Themis and Zeus 12 , he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our young men to hear the words of Aeschylus, that

(392) about men poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man’s own loss and another’s gain—these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and say the opposite. To be sure we shall, he replied. But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that you have implied the principle for which we have been all along contending. I grant the truth of your inference. That such things are or are not to be said about men is a question which we cannot determine until we have discovered what justice is, and how naturally advantageous to the possessor, whether he seem to be just or not. Most true, he said. Enough of the subjects of poetry: let us now speak of the style; and when this has been considered, both matter and manner will have been completely treated. I do not understand what you mean, said Adeimantus. Then I must make you understand; and perhaps I may be more intelligible if I put the matter in this way. You are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or to come? Certainly, he replied. And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the two? That again, he said, I do not quite understand. I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore, I will not take the whole of the subject,