Book III, 386–394

386a “Such, then,” I said, “are the things about the gods, it seems, that those who are to honor the gods and their parents and hold their friendship with one another no small matter must hear—or must not hear—from childhood.”

“And rightly so, I think,” he said.

“What if they are to be courageous? Must we not tell them things that will make them fear death as little as possible? 386b Or do you think anyone who carries that fear within him could ever become courageous?”

“By Zeus, I do not.”

“And do you think a man who believes that the realm of Hades exists and is dreadful will be fearless in the face of death and choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery?”

“Not at all.”

“Then it seems we must also oversee those who undertake to tell stories about that realm, and ask them not to revile the things in Hades indiscriminately, but rather to praise them, since their accounts would be neither true 386c nor useful to men who are to become fighters.”

“Yes, we must,” he said.

“Then we shall erase all such passages, beginning with this one:‘I would rather serve another man for hire upon the earth,a man with no allotment and scarcely enough to live on,than reign over all the dead who have perished.’And this: 386d‘Then the houses of the dead would stand revealed to mortal and immortal eyes,dreadful and dank, hated even by the gods.’And:‘Ah, so there is, even in the house of Hades,a soul and a phantom, though no understanding remains at all.’And this:‘He alone has understanding; the others flit about as shadows.’And:‘The soul flew from his limbs and went to Hades,lamenting its fate, leaving manhood and youth behind.’

387a And this:‘The soul went beneath the earth like smoke,with a shrill cry.’And:‘As bats in the recess of a vast cavefly shrieking when one falls from the cluster on the rock,clinging to one another,so these went together, shrieking.’

387b We shall ask Homer and the other poets not to take offense when we strike out these and all such passages—not because they lack poetry or are not pleasant for most people to hear, but because the more poetic they are, the less they should be heard by children and men who must be free and fear slavery more than death.”

“Certainly.”

“Then we must also discard all the terrible and frightening names associated with these things—Cocytus and Styx, 387c the dwellers below and the lifeless dead, and every other name of this kind that makes all who hear it shudder, as people suppose. Perhaps they serve some other purpose well; but we fear for our guardians, lest such shuddering make them more feverish and softer than they should be.”

“And rightly,” he said, “do we fear it.”

“Then these must be removed?”

“Yes.”

“And we must speak and compose in the opposite manner?”

“Clearly. 387d”

“Then shall we also remove the wailings and lamentations of men of renown?”

“We must,” he said, “if we remove the others.”

“Consider,” I said, “whether we shall be right to do so. We say that a decent man will not regard death as dreadful for another decent man who is his friend.”

“So we say.”

“Then he will not lament for him as if something dreadful had happened to him.”

“Certainly not.”

“But we also say that such a man is most self-sufficient when it comes to living well and, unlike others, needs another person least of all. 387e”

“True,” he said.

“Then losing a son or brother, wealth, or anything of that kind will be least dreadful to him.”

“Least of all.”

“So he will also lament least, bearing such a misfortune as calmly as possible when it comes upon him.”

“By far.”

“Then we would be right to remove laments from the mouths of distinguished men and assign them to women—and not even to respectable women—

388a and to men of no worth, so that those we say we are raising to guard our country will recoil from behaving like them.”

“Right,” he said.

“Once more, then, we shall ask Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess,‘now lying on his side, now againon his back, now face downward,’then rising upright and roaming distraught 388b ‘along the shore of the barren sea’; nor taking ‘sooty dust in both hands’ and pouring it over his head; nor weeping and lamenting in all the ways that poet has depicted. Nor should they portray Priam, descended from gods, pleading and‘rolling in the filth,calling each man by name.’Far more urgently still shall we ask them not to portray gods lamenting and saying: 388c‘Alas for me, wretched mother, alas, who bore the noblest child!’But if they must portray gods so, let them at least not dare to imitate the greatest of the gods in so unworthy a fashion that he says:‘Ah, I see with my own eyes a man dear to mepursued around the city, and my heart grieves.’And:‘Alas for me! Sarpedon, dearest to me among men,388d is fated to fall beneath Patroclus, son of Menoetius.’For if our young men, my dear Adeimantus, hear such things in earnest and do not laugh at them as unworthy of being said, scarcely would any of them, mere mortals though they are, think such behavior beneath them or rebuke themselves if they felt an impulse to say or do the like. Instead, without shame or endurance, they would sing out long dirges and lamentations over trifling troubles. 388e”

“What you say is entirely true,” he said.

“But they must not, as our argument just showed us; and we must follow it until someone persuades us with a better one.”

“No, they must not.”

“Nor, surely, should they be given to laughter. For when anyone yields to violent laughter, the result is generally a violent change of temper.”

“So it seems to me,” he said.

“Then we cannot approve of portraying people of any consequence overcome by 389a laughter, much less gods.”

“Much less,” he said.

“Then neither shall we approve Homer's account of the gods:‘Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed godswhen they saw Hephaestus bustling through the hall.’”

“Not by your argument.”

“If you wish to call it mine,” he said; “at any rate, 389b we cannot approve it.”

“And truth, surely, must be held in high esteem. For if we were right in what we said a moment ago, and falsehood is truly useless to gods but useful to human beings as a kind of medicine, clearly such a thing must be entrusted to physicians, not handled by private citizens.”

“Clearly,” he said.

“Then if anyone has the right to lie, it belongs to the city's rulers, for the city's benefit, whether in dealing with enemies or with citizens; but no one else must touch it. 389c If a private citizen lies to such rulers, we shall call it an offense as great as, or greater than, a patient's failure to tell his doctor the truth about his condition, an athlete's failure to tell his trainer the truth about his body, or a sailor's failure to tell the pilot the facts about the ship and its crew, and how he or any other sailor is performing his duty.”

“Entirely true,” he said. 389d

“Then if a ruler catches anyone else lying in the city—‘one of the craftsmen of the people,a seer, a healer of ills, or a builder of ships’—he will punish him for introducing a practice that could overturn and destroy a city, as it could a ship.”

“If deeds follow our words,” he said.

“What then? Will our young men not need self-control?”

“How could they not?”

“And for the many, are not the chief elements of self-control these: to obey their rulers 389e and themselves to rule their pleasures in drink, love, and food?”

“So it seems to me.”

“Then we shall, I think, call well said such lines as Diomedes speaks in Homer:‘Friend, sit quietly and heed my words,’and the lines that follow these:‘The Achaeans advanced breathing fury,silent in awe of their commanders,’and others of that kind.”

“Well said.”

“But what of these lines:‘You, sodden with wine, with a dog's eyes and a deer's heart,’

390a and what follows them? Are they well said, or any other insolent words that a private person has spoken against rulers in prose or poetry?”

“No.”

“For I think it is not fitting for young men to hear such words if they are to learn self-control. If they give some other pleasure, no wonder. How does it seem to you?”

“As you say,” he replied.

“And what of having the wisest of men say that the finest sight of all, in his judgment, is when‘the tables are laden 390b with bread and meat, and the cupbearer draws winefrom the mixing bowl, carries it round, and pours it into cups’?Do you think it fitting for a young man to hear this if he is to master himself? Or that it is ‘most pitiable to die of hunger and meet one's fate’? Or that Zeus, while all the other gods and men slept, alone awake and pondering his plans, readily 390c forgot them all through desire for sex, and was so overcome at the sight of Hera that he would not even enter their chamber but wanted to lie with her there on the ground, saying that desire had never held him so strongly, not even when they first met in secret from their dear parents? Nor should they hear how Ares and Aphrodite were bound by Hephaestus for a similar affair.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “I do not think it fitting. 390d”

“But wherever,” I said, “distinguished men are said or shown to endure everything steadfastly, those are the things they should see and hear. For instance:‘He struck his breast and rebuked his heart:Endure, my heart; you once endured a worse thing still.’”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Yet we must not allow these men to accept bribes or to love money. 390e”

“Not at all.”

“Nor must anyone sing to them that‘Gifts persuade gods, and gifts persuade revered kings.’Nor should we praise Phoenix, Achilles' tutor, as speaking rightly when he counseled Achilles to take gifts and then help the Achaeans, but not to give up his anger without gifts. And we shall neither think Achilles himself worthy of such conduct nor agree that he loved money so much that he accepted gifts from Agamemnon, and again demanded payment to release a corpse 391a but would not release it otherwise.”

“Such things certainly deserve no praise,” he said.

“I hesitate,” I said, “out of regard for Homer, to declare that it is impious to say these things of Achilles or to believe others who do; likewise the tale that he said to Apollo:‘You have wronged me, far-striking one, most destructive of all the gods;I would take revenge on you, if only I had the power.’391b Nor should we believe that he defied the river, a god, and stood ready to fight him, or that he said of the hair consecrated to the other river, Spercheius, ‘I would give this hair to the hero Patroclus to carry with him,’ though Patroclus was dead, and actually did so. The dragging of Hector around Patroclus' tomb, and the slaughter of living prisoners on his pyre—we shall say none of these accounts is true, nor allow 391c our people to believe that Achilles, son of a goddess and of Peleus, a man of great self-control and third in descent from Zeus, raised by the wisest of men, Chiron, was so full of turmoil that he carried within him two contrary diseases: servility joined to love of money, and arrogance toward gods and men alike.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Then let us not believe,” I said, “or permit anyone to say that Theseus, son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, son of Zeus, 391d embarked on such dreadful abductions, or that any other son of a god and hero would dare commit the dreadful and impious deeds falsely attributed to them now. Let us compel the poets either to deny that these deeds were theirs or to deny that these men were sons of gods. They must not say both, nor try to persuade our young men that gods beget evil and heroes are no better than ordinary men. As we said before, 391e these stories are neither holy nor true: we showed, surely, that evil cannot come from gods.”

“Of course.”

“And they harm those who hear them. For everyone will pardon his own wickedness if he believes that such things are and have been done even by‘those near to the seed of gods,those close to Zeus, whose ancestral altar of Zeusstands in the air on Mount Ida,’and that‘the divine blood in them has not yet died away.’That is why we must put an end to such stories, lest they breed in our young men 392a an easy readiness for wrongdoing.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“What category of stories,” I said, “remains for us to define as suitable or unsuitable? We have said how stories should speak of gods, spirits, heroes, and those in Hades.”

“Indeed.”

“Then what remains would be stories about human beings?”

“Clearly.”

“But, my friend, we cannot lay down a rule about these at present.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I think, we would say that poets and storytellers make the greatest error 392b about human beings when they say that many unjust people are happy and just people wretched, that injustice pays if it goes undetected, and that justice benefits someone else but costs its possessor. We would forbid them to say such things and command them to sing and tell the opposite. Would we not?”

“I know we would,” he said.

“Then if you agree that I am right, I shall say that you have conceded the very thing we have been seeking all this time.”

“You have understood correctly,” he said. 392c

“Then we shall agree that these are the stories to tell about human beings only when we discover what justice is, and how it naturally benefits its possessor, whether or not he seems to be just.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“Let that be the end, then, of the content of stories. Next, I think, we must examine their manner of telling, and our inquiry into both what must be said and how it must be said will be complete.”

Adeimantus said, “I do not understand what you mean by that. 392d”

“But you must,” I said. “Perhaps you will understand better this way. Is not everything said by storytellers or poets an account of things past, present, or future?”

“What else could it be?” he said.

“And do they not accomplish this by simple narration, by narration through imitation, or by both?”

“This too,” he said, “I still need to understand more clearly.”

“I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,” I said. “So, like people who are poor at explaining, I shall take one part rather than the whole 392e and try to show you what I mean by it. Tell me: do you know the beginning of the Iliad, where the poet says that Chryses begged Agamemnon to release his daughter, that Agamemnon was angry, and that Chryses, since 393a he failed to obtain her, prayed to the god against the Achaeans?”

“I do.”

“Then you know that down to these lines:‘He pleaded with all the Achaeans,but most of all with the two sons of Atreus, commanders of the people,’the poet speaks in his own person and does not try to turn our minds elsewhere, as though someone other than himself were speaking. But after these lines he speaks as if he himself were Chryses and tries 393b as hard as he can to make us think the speaker is not Homer but the priest, an old man. Almost all the rest of his account of events at Troy and of the sufferings in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey is composed in the same manner.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Is it narration, then, both when he recounts each speech and when he recounts what comes between the speeches?”

“Of course. 393c”

“But when he delivers a speech as if he were another person, shall we not say that he makes his own expression as like as possible to that of whoever he has presented as about to speak?”

“We shall; what else?”

“And making oneself like someone else in voice or bearing is imitating the person one resembles?”

“Certainly.”

“Then in such passages he and the other poets evidently make their narration through imitation.”

“Indeed.”

“But if the poet never concealed himself, all his poetry and narration 393d would be free of imitation. And so you do not say again that you do not understand how that could happen, I shall explain. If Homer had said that Chryses came bearing a ransom for his daughter and supplicating the Achaeans, especially their kings, and then had gone on speaking not as Chryses but still as Homer, you understand that this would have been not imitation but simple narration. It would have gone something like this—I shall put it in prose, since I am no poet: 393e The priest came and prayed that the gods would grant them victory over Troy and a safe return, and that they would release his daughter to him, accepting the ransom and honoring the god.

When he had spoken, the others showed reverence and consented, but Agamemnon grew savage and ordered him to leave at once and never come back, lest his staff and the god's garlands fail to protect him. Before his daughter was released, he said, she would grow old in Argos with him. He told the priest to go and not provoke him, 394a so that he might reach home safely. The old man heard and was afraid and went away in silence. When he had left the camp, he offered many prayers to Apollo, calling on the god by his titles, reminding him of his service and asking him to repay it if the priest had ever pleased him by building temples or offering sacred sacrifices. In return for these, he prayed that the Achaeans might pay for his tears by the god's arrows. That, my friend,” I said, “is how simple narration is made without 394b imitation.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Understand, then,” I said, “that the opposite arises when someone removes what the poet says between speeches and leaves only the dialogue.”

“That too I understand,” he said. “It is what happens in tragedies.”

“You have grasped it perfectly,” I said. “And now, I think, I can make clear to you what I could not before: one kind of poetry and storytelling 394c is wholly through imitation, as you say tragedy and comedy are; another consists in the poet's own recital, found chiefly, perhaps, in dithyrambs; and yet another uses both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you follow me.”

“Now I understand,” he said, “what you meant before.”

“Recall also what came before that: we said that we had settled what should be said but still had to examine how it should be said.”

“I remember. 394d”

“That was precisely what I meant when I said we must reach an agreement on whether we shall allow poets to make their narratives through imitation, or allow it in some cases but not in others, defining which are which, or forbid imitation altogether.”

“I suspect,” he said, “you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into the city.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “and perhaps still more besides. I do not yet know myself; but wherever the argument carries us, like a wind, there we must go.”

“And rightly so,” he said. 394e

“Consider now, Adeimantus, whether our guardians should be imitators or not. Does this too follow from what we said before—that each person could practice one occupation well, but not many, and that if he tried to take on many he would fail at them all and gain distinction in none?”

“Of course.”

“Then does the same account apply to imitation: one person cannot imitate many things well as he can one?”

“No, he cannot.”

386a “So these are roughly the kinds of stories about the gods,” I said, “that children must and must not hear from the start, if they are to honor the gods and their parents and consider their friendship with one another important.”“I think we have got that right,” he said.“What if they are also to be brave? Mustn’t we tell stories that will make them as little afraid of death as possible? 386b Or do you think anyone can be brave while holding that fear inside?”“By Zeus, I don’t.”“And do you think someone who believes the world of Hades exists and is terrible will be unafraid of death? Will he choose death in battle over defeat and slavery?”“Not at all.”“It seems, then, that we must supervise people who try to tell these stories too. We must ask them not to speak so badly of the world of Hades but rather to praise it. What they say now is neither true 386c nor useful to those who will be soldiers.”“We certainly must,” he said.“Then we will strike out all such passages,” I said, “starting with this one:‘I would rather work the land as a hired hand for another man,a man without an inheritance who has little to live on,than rule over all the dead who have perished.’And this one: 386d‘Then the house of the dead would appear to mortals and immortals,horrible and dank, hated even by the gods.’And:‘Oh no! So there really is, even in the house of Hades,a soul, a phantom, but no understanding at all.’And:‘He alone still has his mind; the rest dart about as shadows.’And:‘His soul flew from his body and went to Hades,lamenting its fate, leaving behind his manhood and youth.’

387a And:‘The soul went below the earth like smoke,shrieking as it vanished.’And:‘As bats fly squeaking deep inside a vast cavewhen one falls from its cluster on the rockand the others cling to one another,so the souls went together, shrieking.’387b We will ask Homer and the other poets not to be angry when we erase these and all similar passages. It is not because they lack poetry or because most people do not enjoy hearing them. The more poetic they are, the less children and men who must be free should hear them. Such people must fear slavery more than death.”“Absolutely.”“Then must we also reject all the frightening and alarming names for these things? Cocytus and Styx, 387c the dead below and the ghosts, and every other name of this kind that makes everyone who hears it shudder, as people think it does. Perhaps those names are useful for some other purpose. But we worry about our guardians. Such shudders might make them more excitable and softer than they should be.”“And we are right to worry,” he said.“So we must remove them?”“Yes.”“And tell and compose stories in the opposite manner?”“Clearly.” 387d“Then shall we also remove the laments and expressions of grief spoken by men of standing?”“We must,” he said, “if we are to follow our earlier rule.”“Consider whether we would be right to do so,” I said. “We say that a decent man will not think death terrible for another decent man who is his friend.”“We do.”“So he would not lament for his friend as though something terrible had happened to him.”“No.”“And we also say that such a man is more self-sufficient than anyone else when it comes to living well. Unlike 387e other people, he has the least need of anyone else.”“That’s true,” he said.“So the loss of a son or brother, of money, or of anything like that is least terrible for him.”“Certainly.”“And he will grieve least and bear such a misfortune as calmly as possible when it happens to him.”“Very much so.”“Then we would be right to remove laments from the words of famous men. We would leave them to women, though not to respectable women,

388a and to the worst of men. That way, those we say we are raising to guard our land will be ashamed to behave like them.”“That’s right,” he said.“So we will again ask Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as‘lying now on his side, now on his back,now face down,’then standing up and wandering distraught 388b along the shore of the barren sea. Nor should they have him take dark dust in both hands and pour it over his head. They should not show him weeping and lamenting in all the other ways Homer described. Nor should they show Priam, who was close to the gods, begging and‘rolling in the dirt,calling out each man by name.’Still more strongly, we will ask them not to portray the gods lamenting and saying: 388c‘Poor me, wretched mother of a noble son!’And if they do portray gods like that, they must at least not dare represent the greatest of the gods so badly that he says:‘Oh no! I see a man I love being chased around the city,and my heart mourns for him.’Or:‘Oh, my grief! Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, is fated388d to fall at the hands of Patroclus, son of Menoetius.’For if our young people take such things seriously, my dear Adeimantus, instead of laughing at them as unworthy things to say, it will be hard for any of them, mere humans, to think this behavior beneath them. They will hardly reproach themselves if they feel like saying or doing something similar. Without shame or restraint, they will sing many songs of lament over minor troubles.” 388e“What you say is absolutely true,” he said.“But they must not do that, as our argument just showed. We must follow it until someone persuades us with a better one.”“They must not.”“And they must not be fond of laughter either. When someone lets himself go in violent laughter, it usually brings about a violent change in his state of mind.”“I think so,” he said.“So we should not accept portrayals of people worth mentioning overcome by

389a laughter, still less portrayals of gods that way.”“Much less,” he said.“Then we will not accept lines like these from Homer about the gods:‘Uncontrollable laughter broke out among the blessed godswhen they saw Hephaestus bustling through the hall.’”“According to your argument, we should not accept them.”“If you want to call it mine,” he said. “But 389b we certainly should not accept them.”“We must also put a high value on truth. If we were right a moment ago that a lie is useless to gods but useful to humans as a kind of medicine, clearly it must be left to doctors. Ordinary people must not touch it.”“Clearly,” he said.“So the rulers of the city, if anyone, may lie to enemies or citizens for the city’s benefit. No one else may do so. 389c We will say that an ordinary person who lies to these rulers commits the same offense, and a greater one, than a patient who fails to tell his doctor the truth about his illness, or an athlete who hides his physical condition from his trainer, or a sailor who conceals from the captain the real state of the ship and its crew, including how he himself or another sailor is doing.”“Absolutely true,” he said. 389d“Then if a ruler catches anyone else in the city lying, one of those‘who practice the trades,a seer, a healer of illness, or a worker in wood,’he will punish him for bringing in a practice that could overturn and destroy a city as it could a ship.”“If the actions follow the words,” he said.“And what about self-control? Won’t our young people need that?”“Of course.”“For most people, aren’t its most important parts these: to obey their rulers 389e and to rule themselves where pleasures of drinking, sex, and eating are concerned?”“I think so.”“So I think we will approve lines like what Diomedes says in Homer:‘Friend, sit in silence and obey what I say,’and the lines that follow, such as:‘The Achaeans went forward breathing fury,silent in their fear of their commanders,’and anything else of that sort.”“Yes.”“But what about lines like these:‘You drunken man, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer,’

390a and the lines that follow? Are those right? And what about all the other insolent things that ordinary people have said to rulers, in prose or in poetry?”“No.”“I don’t think young people should hear such things if they are to learn self-control. If these lines offer some other pleasure, that is no surprise. What do you think?”“I agree,” he said.“What about making the wisest of men say that he thinks the best thing of all is when‘tables are filled 390b with bread and meat,and a cupbearer draws wine from a mixing bowland carries it around to pour into the cups’? Do you think it helps a young person learn self-control to hear that? Or to hear that‘death by hunger is the most pitiful fate’? Or to hear how Zeus, while all the other gods and humans slept, lay awake making plans, then easily 390c forgot every one of them because he wanted sex? He was so overwhelmed when he saw Hera that he would not even go inside, but wanted to sleep with her there on the ground. He said his desire was stronger than when they first met in secret without their parents knowing. And what about Ares and Aphrodite being caught in Hephaestus’s bonds for the same sort of reason?”“By Zeus, no,” he said. “I don’t think these stories are suitable.” 390d“But if distinguished men say or do anything that shows endurance in all circumstances,” I said, “we should watch and listen. For example:‘He struck his chest and spoke sharply to his heart:Endure, my heart. You have endured something worse before.’”“Absolutely,” he said.“And we must not let our men take bribes or love money.” 390e“Certainly not.”“Nor should they be sung the line‘Gifts persuade gods, and gifts persuade respected kings.’Nor should we praise Phoenix, Achilles’ tutor, as though he gave good advice when he urged Achilles to accept gifts and then defend the Achaeans, but without gifts to keep his anger. And we will not think it right, or agree, that Achilles himself loved money so much that he accepted gifts from Agamemnon and demanded payment to release a dead body,

391a but would not otherwise do it.”“No, it is not right to praise such things,” he said.“Out of respect for Homer,” I said, “I hesitate to say that it is impious to make these claims about Achilles or believe others who make them. There is also the claim that he said to Apollo:‘You harmed me, far-shooting god, most destructive of all the gods.I would pay you back if I had the power.’391b He was said to have defied the river, though it was a god, and to have been ready to fight it. And about the hair dedicated to another river, the Spercheius, he said, ‘Let me give my hair for the hero Patroclus to take with him,’ though Patroclus was dead. We should not believe that Achilles did this. Nor will we say it is true that he dragged Hector around Patroclus’s tomb or slaughtered living captives at his funeral pyre. We will not allow 391c our people to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus, a very self-controlled man and the third in descent from Zeus, and raised by the very wise Chiron, was so confused that he had two opposing illnesses within him: a slavish love of money and a proud contempt for gods and humans.”“You’re right,” he said.“Then let us not believe,” I said, “or let anyone claim, that Theseus, son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, son of Zeus, 391d set out to commit terrible abductions. Nor should we believe that any other son of a god or any hero would dare do the dreadful, impious things falsely attributed to them today. Instead, we must force the poets either to say these were not their deeds or to say these men were not sons of gods. They must not say both or try to convince our young people that gods produce evil offspring and heroes are no better than other humans. As we said earlier, 391e such claims are neither pious nor true. We have shown that evil cannot come from the gods.”“Of course.”“And the stories harm their listeners. Everyone will excuse his own wrongdoing if he is persuaded that similar deeds are done, and have been done, even by‘those whose blood is close to the gods,those near to Zeus, whose altar to their ancestral Zeusstands in the open sky on Mount Ida,’and that‘the blood of the gods has not yet faded in them.’That is why we must stop such stories. They might give our young people far too much

392a readiness to do wrong.”“Quite so,” he said.“So what kind of stories remains for us to set rules about, deciding which may and may not be told?” I asked. “We have dealt with how people should speak of gods, divine beings, heroes, and those in Hades.”“Yes.”“Doesn’t that leave stories about human beings?”“Clearly.”“But we cannot set rules for them now, my friend.”“Why not?”“Because I think we will say that poets and storytellers mostly get human affairs wrong. They say that many unjust people are happy and just people are miserable; 392b that wrongdoing pays if it goes unnoticed; and that justice benefits someone else but costs the person who has it. We would forbid them to say such things and order them to tell and sing the opposite. Don’t you agree?”“I certainly do,” he said.“Then if you agree that I am right, won’t I say you have agreed to the very thing we have been seeking all this time?”“You have understood correctly,” he said. 392c“So we will agree on the kind of stories to tell about humans only when we discover what justice is, and how by its very nature it benefits the person who has it, whether or not that person appears to be just?”“Exactly,” he said.“Let that finish our discussion of what stories say. Next, I think, we must examine how they say it. Then we will have examined completely both what should be said and how.”Adeimantus said, “I don’t understand what you mean.” 392d“But you should,” I said. “Perhaps this will make it clearer. Isn’t everything said by storytellers or poets an account of things past, present, or future?”“What else could it be?” he said.“And don’t they give such accounts either by straightforward narration, by imitation, or by a mixture of the two?”“I still need a clearer explanation of that,” he said.“I seem to be a ridiculous, unclear teacher,” I said. “Like someone who cannot explain a thing as a whole, I will take one part 392e and use it to show what I mean. Tell me: you know the beginning of the Iliad? The poet says Chryses asks Agamemnon to release his daughter, Agamemnon gets angry, and Chryses, when he fails,

393a prays to the god against the Achaeans.”“I do.”“Then you know that down to the lines‘he begged all the Achaeans,and especially the two sons of Atreus, leaders of the people,’the poet speaks in his own voice. He does not try to make us think the speaker is anyone but himself. But after that, he speaks as if he were Chryses 393b and does everything he can to make us think the speaker is not Homer but the priest, an old man. He tells almost the whole rest of the story this way, about events at Troy and the experiences in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey.”“Certainly,” he said.“But it is still narration when he gives each speech as well as when he tells what happens between the speeches, isn’t it?”“Of course.” 393c“Yet when he speaks as if he were someone else, won’t we say that he makes his own speech resemble as closely as he can that of the person he has said will speak?”“Yes. What else?”“And making oneself like another person in voice or appearance is imitating that person, isn’t it?”“It is.”“Then it seems that Homer and the other poets use imitation to tell stories in such cases.”“Certainly.”“But if the poet never hid his own identity, 393d all his poetry and narration would be free of imitation. So that you don’t say again that you don’t understand how that could happen, I will explain. Suppose Homer said that Chryses arrived with a ransom for his daughter and begged the Achaeans, especially their kings. Suppose he then continued speaking not as Chryses but as Homer. That would not be imitation; it would be straightforward narration. It would go something like this. I will put it in prose, since I’m no poet. 393e When the priest arrived, he prayed that the gods would grant the Achaeans victory over Troy and a safe return home, and that they would take the ransom and release his daughter out of respect for the god. The other Achaeans treated him with respect and agreed, but Agamemnon grew angry. He ordered the priest to leave at once and not come back, or his staff and the god’s wreaths might not protect him. Before his daughter was released, Agamemnon said, she would grow old with him in Argos. He told the priest to leave and not provoke him,

394a so that he could get home safely. The old man was frightened when he heard this and went away in silence. Once outside the camp, he prayed at length to Apollo. He called the god by his titles and reminded him of any gifts that had pleased him, whether in building temples or making sacrifices. In return, he prayed that Apollo would make the Achaeans pay for his tears with the god’s arrows. That, my friend,” I said, “is what 394b straightforward narration without imitation looks like.”“I understand,” he said.“Then understand that its opposite occurs when someone removes what the poet says between the speeches and leaves only the exchanges.”“I understand that too,” he said. “That is how tragedies are written.”“You have it exactly,” I said. “Now I think I can show you what I could not show you earlier. Some poetry and storytelling consists entirely of imitation, 394c as you said of tragedy and comedy. Some consists of the poet’s own narration, as you find especially in dithyrambs. Some combines the two, as epic poetry does, and many other kinds of poetry too. Do you follow?”“Yes,” he said. “I understand now what you meant.”“Remember, too, what we said before: we had settled what should be said but still needed to examine how to say it.”“I remember.” 394d“That was exactly my point. We need to agree whether to allow the poets to use imitation when they tell their stories, and, if so, which things they may imitate and which they may not; or whether to forbid imitation altogether.”“I suspect,” he said, “that you are considering whether we should admit tragedy and comedy into the city.”“Perhaps,” I said, “and perhaps still more than that. I don’t yet know. We must go wherever the argument carries us, like a wind.”“Well said,” he replied. 394e“Then think about this, Adeimantus. Do our guardians need to be imitators, or not? Doesn’t the same principle follow from what we said earlier? Each person can practice one occupation well, but not many. If someone tries his hand at many, he will fail at all of them and never become respected for any.”“Of course.”“Doesn’t the same hold for imitation? One person cannot imitate many things well in the way he can imitate one.”“No, he cannot.”