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[600a]
is
there any tradition of a war in Homer's time that was well conducted by his
command or counsel?” “None.” “Well,
then, as might be expected of a man wise in practical affairs, are many and
ingenious inventions1 for the arts and business of life
reported of Homer as they are of Thales2 the Milesian and Anacharsis3 the
Scythian?” “Nothing whatever of the sort.”
“Well, then, if no public service is credited to him, is Homer
reported while he lived to have been a guide in education to men who took
pleasure in associating with him
[600b]
and
transmitted to posterity a certain Homeric way of life4
just as Pythagoras5
was himself especially honored for this, and his successors, even to this
day, denominating a certain way of life the Pythagorean,6 are distinguished
among their contemporaries?” “No, nothing of this sort
either is reported; for Creophylos,7 Socrates, the friend of
Homer, would perhaps be even more ridiculous than his name8 as a representative of Homeric culture and education, if what is
said about Homer is true. For the tradition is that Homer was completely
neglected in his own lifetime by that friend of the flesh.”
[600c]
“Why, yes, that is the tradition,” said I;
“but do you suppose, Glaucon, that, if Homer had really been able
to educate men9 and make them better and had possessed not the art of imitation
but real knowledge, he would not have acquired many companions and been
honored and loved by them? But are we to believe that while Protagoras10 of Abdera and Prodicus11 of Ceos and many others are able by private teaching
[600d]
to impress upon their contemporaries
the conviction that they will not be capable of governing their homes or the
city12 unless
they put them in charge of their education, and make themselves so beloved
for this wisdom13 that their companions all but14 carry them about on their shoulders,15
yet, forsooth, that Homer's contemporaries, if he had been able to help men
to achieve excellence,16 would have suffered him or Hesiod
to roam about rhapsodizing and would not have clung to them far rather than
to their gold,17 and constrained them to
dwell with them18 in their homes,
[600e]
or failing to persuade them, would themselves
have escorted them wheresoever they went until they should have sufficiently
imbibed their culture?” “What you say seems to me to be
altogether true, Socrates,” he said. “Shall we, then,
lay it down that all the poetic tribe, beginning with Homer,19 are imitators of images of
excellence and of the other things that they ‘create,20’ and do not lay
hold on truth? but, as we were just now saying, the painter will fashion,
1 On the literature of “inventions,” εὑρήματα, see Newman ii. p. 382 on Aristot.Pol. 1274 b 4. Cf. Virgil, Aen. vi. 663 “inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,” and Symp. 209 A.
2 Diog. Laert. i. 23-27.
3 Diog. Laert. i. 105 says he was reported to be the inventor of the anchor and the potter's wheel.
4 In the (spurious?) seventh epistle, 328 A, Plato speaks of the life and λόγος advocated by himself. Cf. Novotny, Plato's Epistles, p. 168.
5 Diels i3 pp. 27 f.
6 Cf.ὀρφικοὶ . . . βίοιLaws 782 C.
7 “Of the beef-clan.” The scholiast says he was a Chian and an epic poet. See Callimachus's epigram apudSext. Empir., Bekker, p. 609 (Adv. Math. i. 48), and Suidas s.v.κρεώφυλος
8 Modern Greeks also are often very sensitive to the etymology of proper names. Cf. also on 580 B, p. 369, note d.
9 See on 540 B, p. 230, note d.
10 Cf. Prot. 315 A-B, 316 C.
11 See What Plato Said, p. 486, on Laches 197 D.
12 For διοικεῖν Cf. Protag. 318 E.
13 See Thompson on Meno 70 B.
14 On μόνον οὐκ Cf. Menex. 235 C, Ax. 365 B.
15 Stallbaum refers to Themist.Orat. xxii. p. 254 Aὃν ἡμεῖς διὰ ταύτην τὴν φαντασίαν μόνον οὐκ ἐπὶ ταῖς κεφαλαῖς περιφέρομεν, Erasmus, Chiliad iv. Cent. 7 n. 98 p. 794, and the German idiom “einen auf den Händen tragen.”
16 Cf. Protag. 328 B.
17 The article perhaps gives the word a contemptuous significance. So Meno 89 Bτὸ χρυσίον.
18 οἴκοι εἶναι: J. J. Hartman, Ad Platonis Remp. 600 E, Mnem. 1916, p. 45, would change εἶναι to μεῖναι. But cf. Cic.Att. vii. 10 “erimus una.”
19 Cf. 366 E.Gorg. 471 C-D, Symp. 173 D.
20 Or “about which they versify,” playing with the double meaning of ποιεῖν.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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