Poets

And of enemies, when I had put them to the test — I saw no enemy to a man's reason more hostile than anger.

And I, though I threaten him or promise him — break my threatening and fulfil my promise.

So be forbearing, and hold aloof from it if it wrongs you, and outwit it if it rages — as the poet said:

The poets, indeed, provide nectar, ambrosia, banquets, and Youth or Ganymede to serve the cups;

For these are scarcely more absurd than the things which, poured out in the words of the poets, have done harm by their very charm — poets who have brought in gods inflamed with anger and raging with lust, and have made us behold their wars, battles, combats, and wounds;

And because you do not see how Nature can do this without any mind, you take refuge in a god, like the tragic poets when you cannot unravel the outcome of the plot.

(1) Those among the Arabs and the poets who claimed that they hear the humming of the jānn (*ʻazīf al-jānn*) and see the ghouls (*ghīlān*), and the things they liken to the jinn and the satans (*shayāṭīn*), and to their limbs and their doings.

they claim that with every master among the poets there is a satan who says the poetry upon that master's tongue.

Those of the bedouin Arabs and the poets who claimed that they see the ghouls (1) and hear the howling of the jinn, and what they liken to the jinn and the satans, to their limbs and to their works

11 — Do not busy yourself with memorizing poetry and the fancies of the poets and their verbal ornament, and so leave aside the speech of him who does not speak out of caprice.

Along with that, if a man aims to be a strong dialectician, or an eloquent orator, or a poet who splits open his theme, he inclines towards what he seeks and acquires the book in which the canons of that art were composed, so as to become by them in the highest degree of it and the loftiest rank in it.

So he composed on it a book in which he pointed to the modes of these fancyings, whence they occur and how they occur, and he named it the Book of the Poets and the poetic art.

In such case then it appears he and the other poets effect their narration through imitation.

Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets and writers of prose speak wrongly about men in matters of greatest moment, saying that there are many examples of men who, though unjust, are happy, and of just men who are wretched, and that there is profit in injustice if it be concealed, and that justice is the other man’s good and your own loss;

and so his style will depend wholly on imitation in voice and gesture, or will contain but a little of pure narration.

let them say before the tribunal, if they will, that Minos and Rhadamanthus, by the consent of Plato and the poets, have this lot;

All the poets know them;

For thus even the poets and philosophers set a tribunal among the dead.

And to me it seems that the poets too call the elect among themselves "godlike" and "divine" and "like to the gods" and "equal to Zeus in counsel" and "having counsels like the gods" and "godlike in form"—nibbling, as it were, at the "according to the image and likeness.

for the Hyperborean and the Arimaspian cities and the Elysian plains are commonwealths of the just.

For he is the common king and ruler and president and father of men and gods, and moreover the steward of peace and of war, as it seemed to the poets of old, who were both experienced and wise — if somehow we prove able to hymn his nature and power in a brief discourse, falling short of his worth, while saying just this much.

and second and third comes the matter of the poets and lawgivers — the former exhorting men not to withhold gratitude from that which is older and akin, and is moreover the cause of life and of being, the latter compelling and threatening punishment to the disobedient, without making clear and plain what sort of beings the parents are, and for what benefactions they bid us not leave the owed debt unpaid.

I mean that the kind belonging to the voluntary and persuasive is that of the poets, while that belonging to the necessary and prescriptive is that of the lawgivers;

All men take as much pleasure in listening to this kind of prose as in listening to poetry, and many desire to take lessons in it, believing that those who excel in this field are wiser and better and of more use to the world than men who speak well in court.

others have made studies in the poets;

aye, the poets have related about the gods themselves tales more outrageous than anyone would dare tell concerning their enemies.

on the contrary, we shall be on our guard and consider equally guilty of impiety those who recite and those who believe such lies

For these blasphemies the poets, it is true, did not pay the penalty they deserved, but assuredly they did not escape punishment altogether;

For some of my friends met me and related to me how, as they were sitting together in the Lyceum, three or four of the sophists of no repute— men who claim to know everything and are prompt to show their presence everywhere—were discussing the poets, especially the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, saying nothing original about them, but merely chanting their verses and repeating from memory the clevere …

As to the poetry of Homer and Hesiod and the rest, I would fain speak—for I think that I could silence those who chant their verses and prate about these poets in the Lyceum—but I perceive that I am being carried beyond the due limits which have been assigned to an introduction;

Therefore I shall speak on the poets at another time provided that my age does not first carry me off and that I do not have something to say on subjects more important than this.

besides, a number of the poets of earlier times have left precepts which direct them how to live;

And, again, if one were to make a selection from the leading poets of their maxims, as we call them, into which they have put their best thought, men would show a similar attitude toward them also;

And do not imagine that you can afford to be ignorant of anyone either of the famous poets or of the sages;

To hand heroic actions down in verse;

Confederates and allies, when poets began

For after the public men I went to the poets, those of tragedies, and those of dithyrambs, and the rest, thinking that there I should prove by actual test that I was less learned than they.

Hence too the frenzy of the poets, who nourish human errors with their tales, in which Jupiter, beguiled by the pleasure of an embrace, was thought to have doubled the night.

Therefore, since the philosophers have contrived the physical by conjectures, the poets have drawn the mythical from fables, and the peoples have presumed the national of their own accord, where, then, is the truth to be placed?

The poets, accusers of the gods, Plato decreed should be banished;

The poets too, trembling not before the tribunal of Rhadamanthus nor of Minos, but of the unexpected Christ?

Then the poets are vain, when they assign to the gods human passions and fables;

Certainly the soul is prior to literature, and discourse prior to the book, and sense prior to the pen, and man himself prior to the philosopher and poet.

He was informed that Euthydemus, the handsome, had formed a large collection of the works of celebrated poets and professors, and therefore supposed himself to be a prodigy of wisdom for his age, and was confident of surpassing all competitors in power of speech and action.

Surely, for all the poets sing of him, how that he was envied for his wisdom and done to death by Odysseus.

The object of this, in my opinion, is not that the citizens may vote for the same choirs, not that they may praise the same flute-players, not that they may select the same poets, not that they may like the same things, but that they may obey the laws.