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[607d] Is not that so, friend? Do not you yourself feel her magic1 and especially when Homer2 is her interpreter?” “Greatly.” “Then may she not justly return from this exile after she has pleaded her defence, whether in lyric or other measure?” “By all means.” “And we would allow her advocates who are not poets but lovers of poetry to plead her cause3 in prose without metre, and show that she is not only delightful but beneficial to orderly government and all the life of man. And we shall listen benevolently,

1 Cf. supra,Introd. p. lxiii.

2 In Laws 658 D Plato says that old men would prefer Homer and epic to any other literary entertainment.

3 This was taken up by Aristotle (Poetics), Plutarch (Quomodo adolescens), Sidney (Defense of Poesie), and many others.

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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