“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, and this:

Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence, 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, and this: Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms, and: Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades, Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood, ”

Socrates “

Socrates and:Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul, 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.

Socrates 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.”

Socrates “Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women,

Socrates 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, and then rising up and Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean,

Socrates 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. And yet more than this shall we beg of them at least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying,

Socrates Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest, 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, and: Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest,

Socrates Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius’ offspring.

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.

Socrates “Then if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered

Socrates 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 laughterThis laughter of the Homeric gods has been endlessly commented upon. Hegel allegorizes it. Mrs. Browning (Aurora Leigh) says: And all true poets laugh unquenchably Like Shakespeare and the gods. Proclus, In Rempub. i. 127 Kroll says that it is an expression of the abundance of divine energy. It is a commonplace that the primitive sense of humor of the Homeric gods laughs at the personal deformity of Hephaestus, but they really laugh at his officiousness and the contrast he presents to Hebe. Cf. my note in Class. Phil . xxii. (1927) pp. 222-223. that rose from the blessed immortals When they beheld Hephaestus officiously puffing and panting. — we must not accept it on your view.” “If it pleases you

Socrates 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,

Socrates 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

Socrates the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers, 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

Socrates 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, and what follows:Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains, and all similar passages.”