The Ion of Plato is among the shortest of his dialogues; but it has provoked controversy out of all proportion to its length. It is light and amusing, with vivid characterization, a clearly defined structure and a limited theme. Yet it is not easy to interpret, and its wider implications are baffling.1 The question it poses is: ‘Do poets know what they are talking about?’ Socrates, clearly, thinks the answer is ‘no’; indeed, he believes that poets are ignorant fellows who can write poetry only when in a state of madness. What exactly does he mean by these apparently outrageous judgements? And does he intend them to apply to writers of prose, and to painters and sculptors and all artists of any kind whatever? And even if he is right, we are surely entitled to ask (for Socrates does not volunteer the information) why we should bother our heads about it for one moment. In asking, we are responding to Socrates’ dialectic in a way in which he himself would have wished. The purpose of this introduction is to attempt to give an intelligible answer.
Ion was a rhapsode. What did rhapsodes do? Gorgeously attired, they recited the works of Homer and other poets, apparently in some sort of chant, and usually without the musical accompaniment employed by earlier Homeric singers. Their performances were dramatic: they threw themselves into the part of whatever character Homer was depicting, and acted his scenes. Their audiences could be private or public; in the latter case, large crowds could be attracted, especially at civic festivities. They were professionals, and expected to be paid.2
Some rhapsodes, Ion among them, did more: they lectured. For the Greeks regarded Homer not only as an authoritative teacher of human relationships and conduct,1 but also as a repository of worthwhile information on technical matters of many kinds, ranging from purely technological processes to social and intellectual skills such as oratory, teaching and generalship.2 The rhapsodes undertook to elucidate Homer’s lines and to expatiate, apparently in eulogistic terms,3 on their practical and moral relevance.4 This side of their activities was in effect an early form of literary criticism.
We may now approach the dialogue itself. It has three well-defined episodes:
A. Socrates raises a problem: why is Ion, a devotee of Homer, able to expound descriptions of technical matters, for instance divination or arithmetic, in poets other than Homer only when their descriptions coincide with those given by Homer himself? For normally a skill is possessed ‘as a whole’, in the sense that it confers the ability to assess the comparative quality of descriptions by different observers of the same technical matters. Ion professes not to have this ability; so if it is true that he is able to assess technical passages in Homer only, it cannot be in virtue of a skill that he does so. There must be some other explanation.
B. Socrates advances the hypothesis that Ion, as a rhapsode, is at the end of a long chain of ‘inspiration’ or ‘possession’. A particular Muse inspires particular poets to particular kinds of poetry; these poets, by their works, in turn inspire particular rhapsodes; finally, the rhapsodes communicate by their performance their own inspiration and excitement to their audiences. Thus Ion’s limited ability, to recite and expound Homer alone, is a mad, non-rational thing, the result of some divine dispensation. It is not a matter of knowledge; it is not a skill.
C. Ion stoutly resists the suggestion that he is ‘mad’ and ‘possessed’. Socrates, however, adduces a series of technical passages of Homer, and in each case shows that it is the relevant technical expert who can judge them best. If a rhapsode does have a skill, it is the skill of rhapsody, not of carpentry or medicine. But Ion claims to be able to judge all technical passages in Homer, in any field, and wildly asserts that by virtue of his competence to judge matters of generalship described by Homer, he himself is a good general. Socrates teases him appropriately, and closes the conversation.
To a modern reader, such a conversation may well seem eccentric or even pointless. However, if we remember Socrates’ basic assumptions, we shall not find it difficult to understand why he should have wished to deny that rhapsodes and poets possessed skill (technē: see pp. 20, 22–3, 171, 267 ff.).1 For he believed morality to be a skill, acquired by dialectic; and if that skill could ever be discovered, it would lead to conduct far different from the models of human behaviour offered by the poets – or at any rate, to the same conduct, but based on sharply different calculations (see p. 28). In general terms, therefore, what the Ion attempts is a demolition job on the claims of poets and rhapsodes to be teachers of morality; their pretensions to skill having been swept away, the moral skill to be imparted by Socratic dialectic is left holding the field.
But if this is indeed Socrates’ intention, the way he sets about it is exceedingly strange. Let us divide the whole process of composition and presentation of poetry into six activities or stages:
1. The creative and imaginative element in his work which the poet may feel originates from outside and beyond himself; that part of his ability to compose which just ‘comes’ to him by inspiration without being reducible to rules, and in a way which he himself may well be at a loss to account for.
2. The technical part of the poet’s work: the observance of certain rules of diction and metre, the choice of words and rhythms which he knows will convey his meaning and achieve the effect he wishes to have on his audience; the construction of episodes and speeches of the right length, tone, etc.
(Stage 2 is not wholly reducible to rules, and in any case is in practice intimately dependent on stage 1 and difficult to separate from it. Nevertheless, there is some more or less strict technique in the process of composition; and in that ancient poetry (particularly epic) is tightly constrained by observance of, and variations on, verbal formulae and metrical conventions, this technical aspect perhaps bulks larger in an ancient poet’s work than in that of a modern.)
3. The quality of the poet’s description of the world, of men and arte-facts, and of technical and social skills.
4. The rhapsode’s mastery of delivery: his adoption of gestures, postures and tones of voice calculated to achieve an effect appropriate to the passage he is reciting; in brief, his total performance.
5. The rhapsode’s ability to explain and assess the poet’s description of technical and social skills. This explanation, which is pan of a more general elucidation or eulogy of the text, presumably need not take the form of a complete exposition of the technical process or social skill in question: it could consist simply of showing how the poet adapts or abridges such a process or skill by selection of some elements in it and omission of others, for his own purpose. Nevertheless, the rhapsode will need some technical knowledge to give an adequate account, even for these limited ends.
6. The interest and excitement which stages 4 and 5 generate in the audience.
The oddities in the argument of the Ion may now emerge:
(a) Inspiration (stage 1). Socrates’ description of the ‘inspired’ state is loaded. Greek poets certainly thought of themselves as ‘inspired’, that is to say assisted, by divinities, notably the Muses; that is why they commonly invoked them at the beginning of their poems. This assistance, they hoped, would take two forms:1 (i) the providing of factual information about the story or theme of the proposed poem; (ii) the conferring of the more or less permanent ability to compose and perform.2 However, they never supposed that such aid dispensed them from effort: they expected to have to work hard at composition, and within the conventions of style and metre to exercise their inventiveness and powers of imagination.3 ‘Possession’, on the other hand, is, as Socrates says (534a), a frenzied state characteristic of the devotees of certain ecstatic religions. In this state the poet is not simply assisted by the god, but is his passive mouthpiece: the god speaks through him (534d-e). There is just enough obvious similarity between ‘inspiration’ and ‘possession’ for Plato (or Socrates) to assimilate them; and the assimilation is tendentious in the extreme, for whereas inspiration allows scope for human skill, possession does not.1
(b) Technical Knowledge (stages 3 and 5). The rhapsode, in stage 5, may well have less technical knowledge than the technical expert. So what? His elucidation of technical passages is a perfectly rational and calculated activity, and will be sufficient for his purpose, that is for commenting on poetry. Similarly, in stage 3, the poet himself knows enough for his purposes, that is the composition of a passage of poetry with sufficient technical elaboration plausibly to conjure up a scene or episode. So even though the poet and the rhapsode commonly do have much less technical knowledge than the expert, it seems an exaggeration to say they have none.
(c) Artistic Skill (stages 2 and 4). In stage 4, admittedly, the rhapsode has to throw himself into the scenes and characters portrayed in the text, and to that extent his performance may be frenzied or irrational; at any rate, he does imagine himself to be present at places where he is not present (535b-c). Yet to deny calculation and control in his choice of gestures and so forth with which to manipulate his audience (535e) is to deny an important element of skill in his performance. Similar considerations apply to the poet’s choice of rhythms etc. in stage 2.
(d) Possession. Though there is some obvious plausibility in seeing possession in stage 1, it is less plausible to find it in stages 2 and 4, less still in stage 3, and wholly unconvincing to find it in stage 5 (as Ion says, 536d, and we believe him).
In short, Socrates uses the agreed comparative lack of technical knowledge in stages 3 and 5 to divert attention2 from the extent to which artistic skill is present in stages 2 and 4. He then fills all the stages 2–5, thus evacuated of expertise, with ‘possession’.3
The Ion, then, makes a single point in a clever and provocative manner: poets and rhapsodes are irrationally possessed, not knowledgeable and skilled. But we ought not let that provocation blind us to the deeper considerations that animate the argument. It is clear that Plato objected to the poets’ claim to be moral experts, in rivalry to the moral expert hopefully to be produced by dialectic. But that rivalry arises ultimately from two radically different ways of looking at the world. To Plato, particular things in this world are mere reflections of the world of forms; to rise above these reflections and to discover the forms themselves, by reason and dialectic, is to penetrate to knowledge of truth, to absolute moral standards, and hence to the secret of a happy life (see pp. 25–7). Poets, by contrast, appeal not to reason but to reason’s enemies, the emotions. They never even try to rise above particulars: they simply adopt (and then in turn influence) the accepted standards of society, and relate their moral lessons to no objective norm at all.
However, the poets were taken to be not only moral guides but knowledgeable on technical matters too. If Plato had merely attacked them as moral guides, he would have been open to the poets’ riposte, ‘But how do you, Plato, know what moral action is? Art you (or this fellow Socrates, whom you admire so much) a moral expert?’ Plato therefore concentrated his attack on the poets at the point at which they (and rhapsodes) are demonstrably most vulnerable: technical expertise. For here acknowledged experts do exist, who invariably know more than the poets, and are able to judge technical matters better than they can. The poets are seen to be merely skating over the surface of the subject-matter in a manner which is impressive only to the layman.1 But why should that matter? What on earth has the poets’ superficial knowledge of technical subjects to do with their status as moral teachers?
Plato might put the point to the poets somewhat as follows: ‘If you do not treat thoroughly and accurately such humdrum things as technical processes, how can you hope to be authoritative on an intensely difficult subject like morality? To take a simple example, how can you hope to describe accurately the life of the gods? Your audience is only too ready to use your accounts of immorality among the gods to justify their own wicked conduct.2 You affect to offer moral guidance; but you rely on descriptions of human affairs and human relationships which are just as superficial as your description of technical matters.3 Superficiality is dictated by the very nature of your activity; if you were less superficial, you would be less attractive; you would not be poets, and no one would listen to you. Try giving a full and accurate description of anything, whether of technical matters or of moral concepts; it would destroy you as artists.’1
It would not avail a poet to abandon his role as an explicit teacher, and claim only to enlarge our sensibility and moral awareness by moving us to pity, tears, sympathy or indeed hilarity at the human condition and at the moral dilemmas experienced in human life.2 Even that kind of moral discourse, Plato would say, is not based on knowledge and skill in the relevant field, the dialectic of moral concepts. Of the superficiality of the poets’ treatment of matters moral their superficiality in matters technical is a sufficient paradigm. In neither area can they ‘give an account’ of what they do; and the ability to ‘give an account’ is evidence of the systematic rational knowledge of a possessor of a skill. Irrational possession by a god prevents poets from intelligibly communicating the nature of their activity.3
One defence is left to the poet: ‘My poetic process is indeed inexplicable; but my poetic product, my poem, may nevertheless state the truth.’ Plato would reply: ‘No doubt it sometimes does (as indeed I admitted in my Laws, 682a); but that is only because you have stumbled across it accidentally, not because of a skill.’
In this introduction I have made an attempt to draw out the Platonic implications of the single and limited point made by Socrates in the Ion. But it is a major obstacle in interpreting the dialogue that such attempts may be quite anachronistic. In form, the Ion is an attack on rhapsodes, not on poets. If criticism of poets is present, it is by virtue of the strong implication of the image of the magnet: that mutatis mutandis poets are to be given the same satirically unfavourable assessments as rhapsodes, and for fundamentally the same reasons (cf. p. 43 n. 3). Nor does Socrates say anything about poets (or rhapsodes) as moral teachers; he says nothing about forms; it is not even quite clear that he intends to go beyond the ostensible tone of light amusement, and to condemn poetry (and perhaps the products of the other arts too) as quite valueless; for all he claims about poets is that they are not skilled but possessed by a god, which not everyone would interpret as a criticism.4 Plato’s more systematic treatment of poetry comes in dialogues that are presumably later than the Ion;1 and in them, though elaborately and bitterly critical of its truth-value and its moral influence, he seems on occasion prepared to accord it some limited usefulness (entirely ignored in the Ion), chiefly on a fairly low social, political and educational level.2
To go into these larger considerations would call for an introduction many times longer; here I can only point out that they may or may not have been present to Plato’s mind when he wrote the Ion. I believe, but cannot prove, that they were.3 Yet it must be admitted that the Ion has a disconcertingly casual air, as though it were no more than a preliminary skirmish in the ‘ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy’ (Republic 607b). It reads like a somewhat arrogant work of Plato’s youth, when intoxicated by the prospect of discovering an exact science of morals he briefly dismissed poetry by attacking it at what he thought was its weakest point, its lack of technē, and supposed he had thereby demolished its claim to serious attention. His argument has a touch of crudity, and few readers will think that he does justice either to poetry or to philosophy. Does he not do something like what it is fashionable nowadays to do in some educational circles, namely to reproach the arts for not employing the’scientific method’, and for not producing precisely quantifiable results?4 The Ion, for all its slightness, raises this and other important issues that are still with us today.5
A. Ion’s Skill: Is It Genuine?
B. The Nature of Poetic Inspiration
C. Ion’s Choice: To be Skilled or Inspired
SOCRATES
ION: A Rhapsode, not known except in this dialogue
Socrates points up the paradox of Ion’s claim to be able to expound technical passages of Homer, but of no other poet (unless they say the same as Homer). In other fields, technical knowledge entails an ability to judge the comparative merits of differing technical accounts. If, therefore, Ion really is able to judge technical passages in Homer, and in Homer alone, it can hardly be by virtue of a skill. Socrates thus fastens on the weakest point in Ion’s activities; he completely ignores all other aspects of the relationship between poet, rhapsode and audience, notably Ion’s undoubted success in performances. Ion appears conceited and naive to a degree, and Socrates’ ostensibly polite questions have a slightly cutting tone.
SOCRATES: Good day to you, Ion. Where have you come from on this [530a] visit to us? From your home in Ephesus?1
ION: Oh no, Socrates, from Epidaurus, from the festival of Asclepius.
SOCRATES: You mean to say the Epidaurians honour the god by a competition of rhapsodes too?2
ION: They certainly do, and of the arts in general.
SOCRATES: I see. Well then, did you take any part in the competition? And how did you fare in it?
ION: We carried off the first prize, Socrates. [b]
SOCRATES: That’s splendid news. Now make sure we win at the Pan athenaic festival too!3
ION: That we shall, God willing.
SOCRATES: I must confess, Ion, I’ve often envied you rhapsodes your art, which makes it right and proper for you to dress up and look as grand as you can. And how enviable also to have to immerse yourself in a great many good poets, especially Homer, the best and most inspired of them, and to have to get up his thought and not just his lines! For if one didn’t [c] understand what the poet says, one would never become a good rhapsode, because a rhapsode has to be an interpreter of the poet’s thought1 to the audience, and that’s impossible to do properly if one does not understand what he is saying. So all this is worth envying.
ION: True, Socrates, true. At any rate, I find this side of my art has given me a lot of work, and I reckon I talk on Homer better than anybody. [d] Neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus nor Stesimbrotus of Thasos, nor Glaucon,2 nor anyone else who has ever lived has had so many fine thoughts to deliver about Homer as I.
SOCRATES: I’m glad to hear it, Ion – since obviously you’re not going to grudge me an exhibition3 of them.
ION: Yes indeed, Socrates, it’s well worth hearing how splendidly I have embellished Homer. I think I’ve got to the point where I deserve to have the homeridae4 crown me with a golden crown.
SOCRATES: Yes indeed,5 and one day I’ll find myself time to listen to you. [531a] For the moment, however, answer me just this: does your expertise extend to Homer alone, or to Hesiod and Archilochus too?6
ION: By no means – only to Homer. That strikes me as enough.
SOCRATES: But is there any topic on which Homer and Hesiod say the same?
ION: Oh, I expect there are plenty.
SOCRATES: So on these topics would you give a better explanation of what Homer says, or of what Hesiod says?
ION: On these topics, on which they say the same things, Socrates, I’d [b] be equally good in either case.
SOCRATES: What about topics on which they do not say the same? For instance, both Homer and Hesiod say something about divination.7
SOCRATES: Now then, in their descriptions of divination these two poets sometimes agree and sometimes differ. In either case, who would give a better explanation of their words, you or one of the good prophets?
ION: One of the good prophets.
SOCRATES: And if you were a prophet, then since you’d be capable of explaining the points on which the poets’ statements agree, you’d also know how to expound those on which their statements differ, wouldn’t you?
ION: Obviously.
SOCRATES: Then why on earth does your prowess extend to Homer, [c] but not to Hesiod or the other poets? Or does Homer have themes which are different from themes which all the other poets have? Hasn’t he mostly described warfare, and how men associate with one another – good men and rogues, laymen and professionals? And about how gods behave when they associate with one another and with mankind? And about what goes on in the heavens and in Hades, and the origins of gods and heroes? Isn’t [d] this the subject-matter on which Homer has composed his poetry?
ION: That’s right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: What of the other poets? Don’t they talk about these same topics?
ION: Yes – but Socrates, they haven’t composed like Homer has.
SOCRATES: Oh, really? Worse?
ION: Much worse.
SOCRATES: Homer has done it better?
ION: Yes, yes, better, by Zeus.
SOCRATES: So then, Ion, my dear chap, when several people are discussing number, and one of them speaks best of them all, someone, I imagine, will know which of them this good speaker is?
ION: I agree.[e]
SOCRATES: Will that be exactly the same person who also knows which speakers are bad, or someone different?
ION: The same, I suppose.
SOCRATES: And that’s the possessor of skill in numbers, isn’t it?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well then, when several people are discussing what sorts of food are healthy, and one of them speaks best of them all, will the person who recognizes the excellence of what the excellent speaker says be different from the person who recognizes the lower quality of what the second-rate speaker says? Or will it be the same person?
ION: I reckon the answer’s obvious: the same.
SOCRATES: And who is he? What do we call him?
ION: A doctor.
SOCRATES: So to put it in a nutshell, we’re saying that when several people are discussing the same topics, in every case the same person will [532a] know both who is speaking well and who is speaking badly. Otherwise, if he’s not going to recognize the bad speaker, clearly he’s not going to recognize the good one either, at least when the subject-matter is the same.
ION: Quite so.
SOCRATES: So the same person turns out to be expert on both kinds of speaker?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you assert that Homer and the other poets, among them Hesiod and Archilochus, do talk about the same topics, but with unequal success – Homer being good at it, the rest inferior?
ION: I do assert that, and it’s true.
SOCRATES: So, given that you recognize the good speaker, you’ll also [b] recognize the poorer quality of what the second-rate speakers say.
ION: Apparently.
SOCRATES: So, my excellent fellow, we shan’t go wrong if we say Ion is an expert equally in Homer and in the other poets,1 seeing that you yourself admit that the same person will be an adequate judge of all who speak on the same themes, and that almost all poets do take the same themes to compose on.
ION: Then what on earth is the reason, Socrates, why when someone [c] converses about any other poet I don’t pay attention and can’t make any worthwhile contribution at all, but just doze off – whereas when anyone mentions Homer, I’m awake in a flash, I’m all attention, and have a lot to say?
SOCRATES: Guessing that’s not difficult, my friend. It’s obvious to everyone that you are unable to speak about Homer with skill and knowledge – because if you were able to do it by virtue of a skill, you would be able to speak about all the other poets too. You see, I suppose there exists an art of poetry as a whole, doesn’t there?
ION: Yes, there does.
[d] SOCRATES: So whatever other skill you take as a whole, the same method of inquiry will apply to every one of them? Do you want to hear me explain the point I’m making, Ion?
ION: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, I do. I love listening to you clever fellows.
SOCRATES: How I wish that were right, Ion! But I suspect it’s you rhapsodes and actors who are clever, and the authors whose compositions you sing, whereas I just speak the truth and nothing but, as is natural in a layman. Now, as to that question I asked you a moment ago: look how [e] trivial and commonplace it is. Anyone can see the point I made, namely that whenever one takes a skill as a whole, the same inquiry applies. Let’s get the point by reasoning like this: an art of painting exists as a whole, doesn’t it?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there exist, and have existed, many painters good and bad?
ION: Surely.
SOCRATES: So have you yet seen anyone who is an expert at demonstrating which paintings of Polygnotus,1 son of Aglaophon, are good and which are bad, but can’t do the same for the other painters? And who, [533a] when someone expounds the works of the other painters, nods off and gets confused and has nothing to contribute – but when he has to give his opinion about Polygnotus or any other painter you like, in isolation, he’s awake and alert and has plenty to say?
ION: No, by Zeus, I certainly haven’t.
SOCRATES: Then again, in sculpture, have you yet seen anyone who is an expert at explaining which of the creations of Daedalus son of Metron are good ones, or of Epeius son of Panopeus, or of The odorus the Samian,2 [b] or of any other one sculptor, but when among the works of the other sculptors becomes confused and nods off, having nothing to say?
ION: No, by Zeus, I’ve not noticed anyone like that either.
SOCRATES: I go further, and reckon that in pipe-playing too, and in playing the lyre and in singing to its accompaniment, and in rhapsody, you have never seen a man who is an expert at giving an explanation in the case of Olympus or Thamyras or Orpheus, or Phemius the rhapsode [c] of Ithaca,3 but who on Ion of Ephesus falls into confusion and cannot contribute an opinion as to which of his rhapsodic performances are good and which are not.
ION: On that point, how can I contradict you, Socrates? But I’m as sure as sure can be about this, that on Homer I am the finest speaker of mankind, and I’m full of things to say, and everybody else agrees what a good speaker I am – but not on the other poets. Now then, see what that amounts to!
Part A seemed to indicate that if Ion is able to expound technical passages of Homer, it is not by virtue of a skill. How then does such an ability arise? Socrates now suggests an explanation in terms of the whole poetic process. There is a magnet-like chain of irrational divine inspiration, from Muse to poet, from poet to rhapsode, and from rhapsode to audience. The reason why Ion cannot expound poets other than Homer is that he is caught in one particular chain – Homer’s – and not in any other. Again, Socrates ignores large parts of the activities of poet and rhapsode, notably the technical skills of rhythm, gesture, etc., that rhapsodes and poets must have.
The tone of this part is elusive. The dialogue as a whole shows Ion to be a feather-brain (evidently the common opinion of rhapsodes: see Xenophon, Symposium, III.6 and Memorabilia, IV. 2.10), and Socrates’ two long and ostensibly admiring speeches contain obvious irony and satire (see especially 534b, on the poet as a ‘flighty’ thing). Yet with the satire there may be mingled some cautious respect: Ion is after all, in some distant and muddled way, in touch with something divine.
SOCRATES: I do see, Ion, and now I’m going to show you what I make [d] of it. This fine speaking of yours about Homer, as I was saying a moment ago,1 is not a skill at all. What moves you is a divine power, like the power in the stone which Euripides dubbed the ‘Magnesian’, but which most people call the ‘Heraclean’.2 This stone, you see, not only attracts iron rings on their own, but also confers on them a power by which they can in turn reproduce exactly the effect which the stone has, so as to attract other rings. The result is sometimes quite a long chain of rings and scraps [e] of iron suspended from one another, all of them depending on that stone for their power. Similarly, the Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs. For all good epic poets recite all that splendid poetry not by virtue of a skill, but in a state of inspiration and possession. The same is true of good lyric poets as well: just as Corybantic worshippers dance without being in control of their senses,1 so too it’s when they are [534a] not in control of their senses that the lyric poets compose those fine lyric poems. But once launched into their rhythm and musical mode, they catch a Bacchic frenzy: they are possessed, just like Bacchic women, who when possessed and out of their senses draw milk and honey from rivers2 – exactly what the souls of the lyric poets do, as they say themselves. You see, I understand the poets inform us that they bring their lyric poetry to us from certain gardens and glades of the Muses, by gathering it from [b] honey-springs, like bees, and flying through the air like they do. And they are right. A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him. No man, so long as he keeps that, can prophesy or compose. Since, therefore, it is by divine dispensation and not in virtue of a skill that they compose and make all those fine observations about the affairs of men, as you do about Homer, the only thing [c] they can compose properly is what the Muse impels them to – dithyrambs3 in one case, poems of praise in another, or dancing-songs, or epic, or iambics.4 Each of them is hopeless at anything else. The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power – otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too. That’s why the god relieves them of their reason, and uses them as his ministers, just as he uses soothsayers and divine prophets – so that we who listen to [d] them may realize that it is not they who say such supremely valuable things as they do, who have not reason in them, but that it is the god himself who speaks, and addresses us through them. A most weighty proof of this is Tynnichus the Chalcidian, who never composed any other poem one would think worth mentioning, but did compose the paean1 which everyone sings, and which is pretty well the finest of all lyrics – [e] literally, to use his own language, ‘an invention of the Muses’. In him especially, I think, the god indicated to us, lest we doubt it, that these fine poems are not on the human level nor the work of humankind, but divine, and the work of gods, whereas the poets are nothing but the gods’ interpreters,2 each possessed by his own possessing god. By way of showing us this, the god deliberately sang the finest lyric through the most [535a] hopeless poet. Or don’t you think I’ve got it right, Ion?
ION: By Zeus, I think you have. Somehow or other your words touch my soul, Socrates, and I do believe good poets interpret these messages from the gods for us by divine dispensation.
SOCRATES: So you rhapsodes in turn interpret3 the words of the poets, don’t you?
ION: You’re right in that, too.
SOCRATES: So your role is to be interpreters of interpreters?
ION: Surely.
[b] SOCRATES: Hold on a minute, Ion, and tell me this – and do be frank about answering whatever I may ask you. When you give a performance of epic and stun your audience, and you sing of Odysseus leaping on to the threshold and revealing himself to the suitors and pouring forth his arrows before his feet,4 or of Achilles rushing at Hector,5 or one of those piteous episodes about Andromache or Hecuba or Priam,6 are you, at that moment, in control of your senses? Or are you taken out of yourself, and [c] does your soul, inspired as it is, imagine itself present at the events youdescribe – either at Ithaca or Troy or wherever else the scene of the epic is set?
ION: How vividly you’ve proved your point, Socrates! I’ll tell you in all frankness. When I say something piteous, my eyes fill with tears. When it’s something frightening or terrible, my hair stands on end with fear, and my heart thumps.
SOCRATES: Well then, Ion, take a man dressed up at a feast or festival [d] in elaborate clothing and golden crowns. If he has lost none of these things, but nevertheless breaks out in tears, or if he gets into a panic in spite of standing among more than twenty thousand friends, when no one is denuding him or doing him any harm, are we to say he’s in his senses at that moment?
ION: No, by Zeus, not at all, Socrates, if the truth be told.
SOCRATES: And do you realize that you people have exactly these effects on most of your spectators?
ION: Yes, I’m very well aware of it. At each performance, I look down [e] on them from up there on the platform as they weep and look at me with dire emotion in their eyes, in amazement at my story. You see, I have to pay a lot of attention to them – since if I make them cry I shall laugh all the way to the bank, whereas if I provoke their laughter, it’s I who’ll do the crying, for loss of my money.
SOCRATES: Well then, do you realize that your spectator is the last of those rings which I said received their power from one another, under the influence of the Heraclean stone? The intermediate one is you, the rhapsode and actor; the first is the poet himself. Through the agency of all [536a] these the god draws the souls of men wherever he wishes, by hitching one man to the power of another. An immense chain of dancers and teachers and assistant teachers dangles down, as if from that stone – all dangling sideways from the rings in the series suspended from the Muse. One poet depends on one Muse, another on another. Our description of this is ‘he is possessed’ – and that’s pretty close, because ‘held’ is just what he is.1 [b] Starting from these first rings, the poets, one man dangles from another and catches the inspiration – from Orpheus in one case, Musaeus in another;2 but most are possessed by Homer. You’re one of them, Ion: you are possessed by Homer, and when someone recites the lines of some other poet, you drop off to sleep and you’re stumped for something to say. But when someone voices a melody of this poet Homer, you’re wide awake at once, and your soul goes a-dancing and you’ve plenty of observations on [c] him. This is because you say what you say about Homer not in virtue of skill or knowledge, but through a divine dispensation and possession, just as Corybantic revellers are acutely sensitive to one melody alone, that of the god by whom they are possessed: they’ve a great store of gestures and phrases to suit that melody, but to others they do not respond at all. It’s just like that in your case, Ion: someone only has to mention Homer and you’re full of things to say; but on the others you’re stumped. So in reply [d] to your question – the reason for this fluency of yours about Homer, but not about the others – the answer is that your tremendous eulogies of Homer come by divine dispensation, not skill.
Socrates now once again concentrates on Ion’s claim to technical knowledge. He allows Ion to show his paces by reciting several technical passages in Homer, and has no difficulty in showing that in each case the person best able to judge them is a technical expert, not a rhapsode. The technical skills described by Homer are different both from one another and from the skill of a rhapsode (note that the existence of such a skill is now acknowledged). The mere fact that Ion has the ability to recount in performance the functions of a doctor, for example, does not make him a doctor. Ion, however, fails to see the difference: he believes that the skill of a general and the skill of a rhapsode are the same – yet he will not allow that a good general is a good rhapsode, only that a good rhapsode is a good general (541a-b).
After some elegantly ironic mockery by Socrates of this absurd position, the conversation comes to an end, without any explicit renunciation by Ion of his claim to technical knowledge. Are we to suppose that he has been in the least improved by Socratic dialectic (cf. p. 31)?
In the closing words Socrates pronounces Ion to be ‘divine’, not ‘skilled’. The conclusion of the dialogue is thus in a sense ‘aporetic’ (see p. 30): it has done no more than establish something poetry is not, namely a vehicle of knowledge of fact. Of what, then, being ‘divine’, is it a vehicle? Of fiction, presumably. But does that entirely condemn it? Formally, at least, Socrates leaves the door ajar for the possibility that poetry may describe for us something with a truth-value other than the literally factual. By implication, he raises, but does not even attempt to solve, the whole problem of the nature and status of poetry and of the arts in general (cf. Schaper, pp. 51–2).
ION: That’s well put, Socrates. None the less, I’d be surprised if you could put it so well as to persuade me that it is in a state of madness and possession that I praise Homer. And I reckon you wouldn’t think so either, if you were to listen to me talking about him.
SOCRATES: I’m very ready to listen to you – but not before you answer me this: which of the things which Homer mentions do you speak well [e] about? Not about them all, I suppose.
ION: Rest assured, Socrates, on every single one of them.
SOCRATES: But surely not on those which Homer mentions, but which you, in fact, don’t know about?
ION: And what sort of things does Homer mention, but I don’t know about?
SOCRATES: Well, doesn’t Homer, in many passages, have a lot to say [537a] about skills? For instance, about driving chariots – if I recall the lines, I’ll give you them.
ION: No, no, I’ll do it – I have them by heart.
SOCRATES: So tell me what Nestor says to his son Antilochus, when he advises him to take good care at the turning-post, in the horse-race in honour of Patroclus.
ION: ‘Lean over,’ he says, ‘yourself, in your well-polished chariot,
A fraction to their left; then to the horse on the right [b]
Shout out and urge him on, and slacken his reins in your hands.
And at the post let the horse on your left hug it close,
So that the nave of your well-wrought wheel
May seem to touch the edge; but avoid grazing the stone.’1
SOCRATES: That’s enough. Now, in these lines, Ion, which will know [c] better whether Homer’s description is correct or not – a doctor or a charioteer?
ION: A charioteer, of course.
SOCRATES: Because he possesses this particular skill, or in virtue of something else?
ION: No, because he has the skill.
SOCRATES: So the god has incorporated into2 each skill an ability to understand some particular function? You see, I reckon that what we understand by virtue of the skill of a pilot, we shall not understand by the skill of a doctor too.
SOCRATES: Nor shall we understand by means of a carpenter’s skill that which we understand by means of a doctor’s.
ION: Indeed not.[d]
SOCRATES: So isn’t it like that in the case of all skills – what we understand by means of one, we shall not understand by means of a second? But answer me this first: do you agree that one skill is distinct from another?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: My criterion for calling two skills ‘distinct’ is that the objects of knowledge in the one field should be different from those in the other. Is that your criterion too?[e]
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: For, presumably, if we were to find some field of knowledge that covered the same things, in what respect would we say the one skill is different from the other, when we would be able to know the same things from both of them? For instance, I know that these fingers of mine are five, and you know the same about them as I do. And if I were to ask you whether you and I know the same by virtue of the same skill, that of numbers, or by a different one, you, no doubt, would say, ‘by the same’.
ION: Yes.[538a]
SOCRATES: So give the answer to the question I was going to ask you just now. Is it your view that, in the case of all skills, we necessarily know the same things by the same skill, but different things by a different skill? But if the skill is different, so too must be the things we know.
ION: Yes, that’s my view, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then anyone who does not possess a given skill will not be able to have a good knowledge of the words or deeds that lie within its province?
ION: True.[b]
SOCRATES: So in the case of the lines you quoted, will it be you or a charioteer who knows better whether Homer puts the matter well or not?
ION: A charioteer.
SOCRATES: Presumably because you are a rhapsode, not a charioteer.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the skill of a rhapsode is different from that of a charioteer?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: So then, if it is different, it is also a knowledge of different objects.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: So what about Homer’s description of how Hecamede, Nestor’s mistress, gives a potion to the wounded Machaon to drink? He puts it more or less like this: [c]
‘… of Pramneian wine,’ he says, ‘and over it
He grated the cheese of a goat, with a grater of bronze,
And then an onion as relish for the drink.’1
Is it the business of a doctor’s skill to decide whether Homer describes this scene correctly, or of a rhapsode’s?
ION: A doctor’s.
SOCRATES: And what about when Homer says,
‘She went down deep like a plummet, [d]
which on the horn of an ox of the field
speeds to bring pain to the ravenous fishes.’?2
Are we to assert that it is more the business of a fisherman’s skill, or of that of a rhapsode, to assess what he says, and whether he says it well or not?
ION: Obviously, Socrates, it’s the business of the fisherman’s.
SOCRATES: Look – if you were the questioner, and if you were to ask me this: ‘So then, Socrates, now that you are finding in Homer, in the [e] case of each of these skills, passages appropriate for it to judge – come on now, find me some for the prophet and his skill: what sort of passages are appropriate for him to distinguish as well or ill composed?’ Look, what a true and simple answer I’m going to give you! In the Odyssey, Homer relates such matters often enough, as for instance when the prophet of Melampus’ house, Theoclymenus, says to the suitors:
‘You blessed fellows, what affliction is this you suffer? [539a]
Your heads and faces and limbs below are shrouded in night,
There’s a blaze of lamentation, and your cheeks are streaked with tears;
The porch is full, the hall is full, of spirits
Hastening to Erebus beneath the gloom. The sun has been
Annihilated from the heavens, and an evil mist has come billowing abroad.’3[b]
And not only there, but in the Iliad too, for example in the battle before the walls. The passage runs:
‘For as they pressed to pass across, there came a bird upon them,
An eagle that flies on high, constraining the host on the left,
[c] Carrying in its claws a monstrous blood-red snake,
Alive and writhing in resistance still, not yet relinquishing its lust to fight.
For back it bent and struck its captor on the breast
Beside the neck, who racked with pain let it drop away
Towards the ground, and cast it to the middle of the crowd,
And shrieking loudly flew away upon the rushing wind.’1 [d]
My claim will be that it’s these and similar sequences which are the proper business of the prophet to scrutinize and judge.
ION: And you’re quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And you’re quite right too, Ion. Now, I picked out for you, both from the Odyssey and from the Iliad, the sort of thing that concerns the prophet, the doctor and the fisherman. So you do the same: you have [e] a closer acquaintance with Homer’s works than I have, so you, Ion, pick out for me the sort of thing which concerns the rhapsode and the rhapsode’s skill, and which the rhapsode properly examines and judges better than the rest of us.
ION: I maintain he judges everything, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Oh no, you don’t maintain it’s everything, Ion. Or are you as forgetful as that? Yet it would hardly do for someone who’s a rhapsode to be forgetful!
ION: What on earth am I forgetting? [540a]
SOCRATES: Don’t you remember you asserted that the skill of a rhapsode is different from that of a charioteer?
ION: I remember.
SOCRATES: So you agree that, by virtue of being different, it’ll know different things?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: So on your argument the skill of a rhapsode will not know everything, nor will the rhapsode either.
ION: That sort of thing being the exception, Socrates.
SOCRATES: By ‘that sort of thing’ you mean more or less the things [b] that belong to the other skills. But if not ‘everything’, exactly what sort of thing will he know?
ION: What may suitably be said by a man, I reckon, and the sort of thing suitably said by a woman; the sort suitable for a slave to say, and the sort suitable for a freeman; and the sort of thing suitable in the mouth of a ruler, and the sort suitable in that of a subject.
SOCRATES: You mean that a rhapsode will know better than a steersman what sort of thing is appropriately said by someone in charge of a ship tossed around in a storm at sea?
ION: Oh no. That, the steersman knows better.
SOCRATES: Then again, will a rhapsode know better than a doctor what [c] sort of thing is appropriately said by someone in charge of a sick person?
ION: No, not that, either.
SOCRATES: Do you mean he’ll know what is appropriate for a slave?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Take a slave who is a cowherd, for example, and is calming down his cows when they are provoked. Will a rhapsode, and not a cowherd, know what it is appropriate for him to say?
ION: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then will he know what it is appropriate for a spinning-woman to say about working wool?
ION: No. [d]
SOCRATES: Then will he know what is appropriate in the mouth of someone who’s a general, when he is exhorting his troops?
ION: Oh yes, a rhapsode would know that sort of thing.
SOCRATES: So, the skill of a rhapsode is that of a general, is it?
ION: Well, at all events, I would know what it is appropriate for a general to say.
SOCRATES: Perhaps that’s because you’re into generalship too, Ion. And if you were into horsemanship as well as playing the lyre, you would recognize when a horse was handled well and when badly. But suppose [e] my question to you were, ‘By which skill do you recognize a well-handled horse, Ion? By the one which makes you a horseman, or by the one which makes you a player of the lyre?’ How would you answer me?
ION: I’d answer, by the one that makes me a horseman.
SOCRATES: So, if you were picking out the good lyre-player too, you’d admit that you did so by virtue of the skill that makes you a lyre-player, not by the one that makes you a horseman.
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when you make a judgement about military matters, do you judge in virtue of your skill in generalship, or in virtue of the skill that makes you a good rhapsode?
ION: There’s no difference, so far as I can see.
SOCRATES: No difference? How on earth can you say that? Are you [541a] saying that the skill of a rhapsode and the skill of a general are one skill, or two?
ION: One, I think.
SOCRATES: So, anyone who’s a good rhapsode is in fact a good general too?
ION: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So too, then, anyone who is in fact a good general is also a good rhapsode?
ION: No, that’s not my view.
SOCRATES: Yet it is your view that anyone who’s a good rhapsode is also a good general? [b]
ION: Oh, indeed.
SOCRATES: Now then, are you, as a rhapsode, the best among the Greeks?
ION: By a long chalk, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So, as a general too, are you the best among the Greeks?
ION: Have no doubt of it, Socrates; that too I learnt from the works of Homer.
SOCRATES: Well then, in the name of the gods, Ion, since you are the best among the Greeks at both activities, at being a general and at being a rhapsode, why do you traipse round1 them as a rhapsode, but not as a general? Or is it your view that the Greeks are in sore need of a rhapsode [c] crowned with a golden crown, but have no need of a general at all?
ION: That’s because our city, Socrates, is ruled by you Athenians,2 and is under your generals, and a general of our own is not needed; and apart from that, your city and Sparta would hardly elect me as one, since you reckon you are good enough at it yourselves.
SOCRATES: My splendid Ion, you know Apollodorus of Cyzicus,3 don’t you?
ION: And what sort of person might he be?
SOCRATES: He’s someone whom the Athenians have often elected as their general, foreigner though he is; and Athens also appoints to generalships [d] and the other posts Phanosthenes of Andros and Heraclides of Clazomenae,1 even though they are foreigners, because they have demonstrated their merit. So, won’t Ion of Ephesus, if he is thought to have merit, be elected and honoured? Come on now, weren’t you Ephesians originally Athenians,2 and isn’t the city of Ephesus second to none? But really, Ion, [e] if there is truth in your claim that it is thanks to skill and knowledge that you have the ability to praise Homer, you’re not playing fair with me. You assure me that you know a great many fine things about him, and you undertake to give an exhibition3 of them. But you’re deceiving me, and you’re nowhere near giving an exhibition. You’re not even willing to tell me what these objects of your expertise are, despite my repeated requests. You’re a proper Proteus:4 you go twisting high and low and take every shape under the sun, until at last you’ve escaped my clutches and popped up as a general, so as to avoid displaying your terrific wisdom [542a] about Homer. So, if you do have skill, and as I remarked just now, your promise of an exhibition is just a trick on me, you’re not playing fair. However, if you do not possess skill, but it is because of divine dispensation and because you are possessed by Homer that you say a lot of fine things about that poet, in a state of ignorance, as I said was your condition, then you are not unfair. So, choose which alternative you prefer: to have us think of you as an unfair fellow, or as a divine one?
ION: There’s a lot of difference, Socrates: it’s a much finer thing to be [b] thought divine.
SOCRATES: Well then, let’s grant you this finer status in our eyes, Ion: as a eulogist of Homer you are not skilled, but divine.