previous next
[602a] but the user will have true knowledge.” “Certainly.” “And will the imitator from experience or use have knowledge whether the things he portrays are or are not beautiful and right, or will he, from compulsory association with the man who knows and taking orders from him for the right making of them, have right opinion1?” “Neither.” “Then the imitator will neither know nor opine rightly concerning the beauty or the badness of his imitations.” “It seems not.” “Most charming,2 then, would be the state of mind of the poetical imitator in respect of true wisdom about his creations.” “Not at all.”

1 This does not contradict book V. 477-478. For right opinion and knowledge cf. 430 B and What Plato Said, p. 517, on Meno 98 A-B.

2 χαρίεις is ironical like χαριέντως in 426 A and καλόν in Theaet. 183 A, but Glaucon in his answer takes it seriously.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Notes (James Adam)
load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: