He meets with evil now and now with good;
but when he does not, and gives a man one or other sort unmixed,
Stark hunger drives him round the awesome world;
nor must we accept his statement that Zeus is dispenser to us
Of things both good and evil.
“And as to the violation of the oaths and the truce violation by Pandaros*—if anyone says that this came about through Athena and Zeus we shall not thank him, or if he says the gods’ discord and decision† came about through Themis and Zeus. Nor again must we let the young people hear, as Aeschylus says,‡ that
God plants a fault in mortals
When he would ruin some house utterly.
But if poets write about the ‘Sorrows of Niobe’—in which these iambic lines of Aeschylus occur—or about the tale of the Pelopids, or the Trojan business or anything else of that sort, we must either forbid them to describe these events as the work of God, or else, if they do, they must find out some such explanation as we are looking for now—they must declare that God did a just and good work, and they gained benefit by being chastised. But to describe those who were punished as miserable, and to say that God made them so, is what the poet must not be suffered to do. Yet he may be suffered to say that the evil men were wretched because they needed chastisement, and that God did them good by punishing them. However, to call God a cause of evil to anyone, being good himself, is a falsehood to be fought tooth and nail; no one must allow that to be said in his own city if it is to be well governed, no one must hear it, whether younger or older, no one must fable it whether in verse or in prose; such things if spoken are impious, dangerous for us and discordant in themselves.”
“I vote with you for this law,” said he. “I am pleased with it.”
“Very well,” said I, “this would be one of the laws about our gods, one of the shapes within which a speaker must speak and a poet must compose; that God is cause of the good things, not of all things.”
“That is quite enough,” he said.
“Now then, here is the second. Do you believe God is a wizard? Is he able to show himself on purpose in different forms at different times, sometimes really changing his appearance and passing into many transformations, sometimes deceiving us by making us think we see him so? Or is he really simple and never leaves his own form at all?”
“I can’t answer you now offhand,” said he.
“Consider then. If something should leave its own form, it is necessary, isn’t it, that it either changes itself or is changed by something else?”
“That is necessary.”
“Take the second first; things which are in the best condition are least liable to be changed and moved by something else; for instance, a body by food and drink and labour, plants and trees by the sun’s heat and wind and such influences; isn’t it true that the strongest and healthiest is least altered in this way?”
“Quite true.”
“With the soul wouldn’t it be the same? The bravest and wisest souls would least be disturbed and altered by any experience from without?”
“Yes.”
“The same is true, I suppose, of made-up things, furniture and buildings and dress, those which are well made and in good state are least altered by time or anything else that happens to them.”
“Certainly that is true.”
“Then everything which is in a good state, either by nature or by art or both, least admits change by something else.”
“So it seems.”
“But think, God and what is God’s is everywhere in a perfect state.”
“Of course.”
“Then in this respect God would be least likely to take on many transformations.”
“Least likely, indeed.”
“Now as to himself: Would he change and alter himself?”
“Clearly he would,” said he, “if he does alter.”
“Does he change himself for the better and more beautiful, or for the worse and more ugly than himself?”
“He must change for the worse,” said he, “if he does change, for I suppose we shall not say there is a lack in God of beauty or virtue.”
“Quite right,” said I; “and if thus perfect, do you think, Adeimantos, that anyone, god or man, would willingly make himself worse than this in any respect?”
“Impossible,” said he.
“Then it is impossible,” I said, “that God should wish to alter himself. No, as it seems, each of them, being the best and most beautiful possible, abides forever simply in his own form.”
“I think that is absolutely necessary,” he said.
“Then no poet must tell us, my excellent friend,” said I, “that
Gods like strangers from a foreign land
Take on all sorts of shapes and visit cities;*
and no one shall lie about Proteus† and Thetis,‡ and in the tragedies and other poems no one shall bring on Hera¶ disguised as a priestess begging alms
For the life-giving sons of Inachos,
The Argive river.
We don’t want these and many other such lies. And the mothers, again, shall not be deluded by them and terrify their children by telling nasty fables, how some gods prowl about by night—just imagine it!—in the likeness of a lot of people from the ends of the earth; we won’t have them blaspheming the gods and adding to their children’s fears at the same time.”*
“We will not!” said he.
“Well then, next,” said I, “the gods themselves cannot change, but do they deceive us and bewitch us and make us think we see them in all these forms?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“What!” said I. “Would a god wish to lie or deceive in word or deed, by putting a pretence before us?”
“I don’t know,” said he.
“Don’t you know,” said I, “that what is truly a lie, if that could be said, all gods and men hate?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“This,” I said; “that to be false in the most vital part of one’s being and about the most vital things is what no one willingly chooses, but one fears more than anything to have falsehood there.”
“I don’t understand even yet,” said he.
“Because you think,” I replied, “that I am saying something pretentious. I only mean that in the soul, to be false and to be deceived and ignorant about what is real, and to have and keep the falsehood in the soul—no one would ever accept such a thing; all have the greatest hatred for it in such a place.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“But surely this could most rightly be called the true lie, as I called it just now, this ignorance in the soul, the ignorance of one deceived; since the lie in words is an imitation of the state of the soul, and came later, an image, not the pure lie. Is not that so?”
“Quite so.”
“Then the real lie is hated both by gods and by men.”
“So I think.”
“What then of the lie in words? When is it useful, and to whom, and so is not hateful? Surely towards enemies? And among those called friends, whenever they try to do something evil, because of madness or some folly; then it becomes a kind of useful preventive medicine to avert this. And in the fables we were speaking of, we make the falsehood as much like the truth as we can, because we do not know what is the truth about ancient things, and so we make it useful.”
“Most certainly,” he said.
“Then in which of these ways is the falsehood useful to God? Doesn’t he know about ancient things, and does he try to make a falsehood as much like them as he can?”
“Oh, that would be absurd,” he said.
“There is no lying poet in God then?”
“I think not.”
“Would he fear an enemy, and lie?”
“Far from it.”
“His friends’ madness then, or folly?”
“No indeed,” he said, “for no fool or madman is a friend of God.”
“Then there is no reason why God should lie.”
“None.”
“If so, the spiritual and divine is wholly without falsehood.”
“It is so beyond a doubt.”
“Altogether, then, God is simple and true in word and deed, and neither changes himself nor deceives others, whether by apparitions or by stories or by sending signs in daylight or in dreams.”
“That is exactly how it seems to me myself,” he replied, “as I hear you say it.”
“You agree, then,” said I, “that this is the second shape in which to tell stories and make poetry about gods; that they are not wizards who change their forms, and they do not mislead us by falsehood in word or in deed?”
“I agree.”
“Then, however much we commend in Homer, here is one thing that we shall not commend, the sending of that dream to Agamemnon by Zeus;* nor Aeschylus, when Thetis tells how Apollo singing at her marriage,†
Foreboded her fine progeny
Long-lasting lives and free from all diseases,
And after telling all, cried out in triumph
For my god-friended lot and cheered my heart.
And I believed the mouth divine of Phoibos
Was without falsehood, full of prophecy:
But he—who sang himself, was there himself
One of the banquet, said all this himself—
He is himself the slayer of my child.
When a poet speaks like this of the gods, we shall be angry, and we will refuse him a chorus,* we will not allow schoolmasters to use his sayings in educating the young, if our guardians are to be pious and themselves divine as far as human beings can possibly be.”
“Most certainly,” he said, “I grant you these two shapes, and I would use these as laws.”
BOOK III
“As regards the gods, then,” said I, “these are the sorts of things, as it seems, which ought and ought not to be heard from childhood, by those who are to honour God and honour their parents, and to hold dear the friendship among themselves.”
“And quite right too, as I believe,” he said.
“What next, then? If they are to be brave, we must not stop there; we must add such things as will make them never fear death. Do you think anyone will be always brave while he has this fear in him?”
“No, indeed I do not.”
“And if he believes in all that about the world of Hades and its terrors, do you think anyone will be fearless, and choose death in his battles rather than defeat and slavery?”
“Not at all.”
“Then, as it seems, we must have our censorship about these fables also, to govern those who undertake to tell them; and we must beg them not just simply to decry the other world, but rather to praise it, since what they say now is neither true nor useful for those who are to be warlike.”
“We must,” he said.
“Let us wipe out, then,” I said, “everything of the kind, beginning with this passage from epic poetry—
I’d rather be a serf or labouring man
Under some yeoman on a little farm
Than be king paramount of all the dead,*
And this—
Lest mortals and immortals should set eyes
Upon these fearsome, danksome dwellings which
The very gods abhor;†
And—
What! Is there really in the house of Hades
A soul and phantom, but no sense is left?‡
And again—
And—
The soul flew from his limbs and went to Hades
Groaning its fate, youth and strength left behind;*
And this—
The soul went down below the earth like smoke,
Gibbering;†
And this—
Like a string of bats in depths of some vast cave
Which hang clinging together from the rock;
If one falls out, they flitter gibbering.
So the souls gibbered as they marched together.‡
We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be put out if we strike through such things as these; we do not deny they are good poetry and what most people like to hear, but the more poetical they are, the less we wish our children and men to hear them, those who must be free, and afraid of slavery more than death.”
“Most certainly.”
“Besides that, we must abolish all those names, those fearful and terrific names, Cocytos, the River of Lamentation, Styx, the River of Hate, the infernals and the corpses dead, and all other names of this type which make those who hear them shiver. Perhaps these may have another use of some kind; but now we are anxious about our guardians; we fear all this shivering may bring on a hot fit and make them softer than they should be.”¶
“We are right to fear that,” he said.
“Then must we abolish these names?”
“Yes.”
“But the opposite type we must use in stories and poetry?”
“That is surely clear.”
“And the weepings and wailings of famous men?”
“They must go,” he said, “if the others do.”
“Just consider,” I said, “if that will be right or not. We say, I take it, that the good man will not believe death is a terror for his comrade, who also is a good man.”
“We do.”
“Then he would not lament for him as if he had suffered something terrible.”
“He would not.”
“Moreover, we say that such a man is most self-sufficient for living well; and least of all needs the help of others.”
“True,” he said.
“Then it is least terrible for him to lose a son or brother, or wealth or any other such.”
“Yes, least of all.”
“Then he laments least, and he endures most calmly when any such misfortune befalls him.”
“Very true.”
“Then we should rightly do away with the dirges of famous men, and leave them for women, not the best women either, and for the mean among men; in order that we may help those whom we talk of bringing up for the guarding of our city to despise doing things like that.”
“Quite so,” he said.
“Then we will beg Homer again, and the other poets too, not to describe Achilles, the son of a goddess, as
Lying now on his side, now on his back,
Now flat upon his face,*
and sometimes rising up and ‘sailing distracted over the shore of the barren sea,’† or ‘catching up the sooty dust with both hands, and scattering it over his head,’‡ or weeping and lamenting as long and loud as the poet describes; or Priam again, a near kinsman of gods, as uttering prayers and
rolling on the dungheap,
And calling loudly on the name of each.*
Much more even than these, we shall beg him not to make a god lament and say
O wretched that I am! O hapless me,
To bear that noblest son!†
And if so for a god, never to dare to depict the greatest of the gods so ungodlike as to cry
Good heavens! there’s a friend chased round the city—I see it with my eyes! my heart laments!‡
and
“For, my dear Adeimantos, if our young people should take such things seriously, instead of laughing at them as unworthily said, a mortal man could hardly think them unworthy of himself, or blame himself if it should occur to him to say or do anything of the sort; no, he would not be ashamed and endure his little sufferings, but many a dirge and lament he would sing over them.”
“Very true,” he said.
“But he must not do it, as our reasoning has shown us; and we must trust our reasoning until someone shall find us a better to convince us.”
“He must not, indeed.”
“Then again, they must not be too fond of laughter. For usually when one indulges violent laughter, such a thing is apt to bring about in oneself a violent upset of feeling.”
“Yes, I think so,” he said.
“Then we must not allow it if a poet shows men of mark mastered by laughter, still less gods.”
“Far less,” he said.
“Then we will not accept this either, from Homer about the gods:
Inextinguishable laughter rose among the blessed gods,
When they saw fussy Hephaistos puffing all about the room.*
This is not tolerable according to your reasoning.”
“If you like to call it mine,” he said. “Certainly it is intolerable.”
“Truth, however, must be highly valued. For if we were right in saying lately that falsehood is really useless to gods, but to men it is useful as a kind of drug, it is clear that we must allow such a thing to doctors, but laymen must not touch it.”
“That is clear,” he said.
“Then for the rulers of the city, if for anyone, it is proper to use falsehood, to deal with enemies or indeed with citizens for the benefit of the city; no others must touch anything of the sort, and that a layman should lie to rulers we shall say is the same or a greater offence than that a sick man should lie to a doctor, or a practising pupil should not tell his trainer the truth about the state of his body, or that anyone speaking to a pilot about ships and sailors should not describe exactly how things are being done on board by himself or some other.”
“Very true,” he said.
“Then if the ruler catches any one of those who are craftsmen telling lies in the city, Seer, healer of sicknesses, or maker of timbers,*
he will chastise him for bringing in a practice as likely to overthrow and destroy the city as it would a ship.”
“Yes,” he said, “‘if tellings comes to doings.’”
“Again: Will not our young men need temperance?”†
“Of course.”
“In temperance, the greatest thing for the multitude is to obey the rulers, and for rulers to rule the pleasures of drinking and love making and eating too?”
“I think so.”
“Then we shall say that such things as this are good, which Diomedes in Homer says to his friend,