[
397a]
“the other kind speaker, the more debased he is the less will he
shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing
unworthy of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence
of many,
1 to imitate all things, including those we just now
mentioned—claps of thunder, and the noise of wind and hail and
axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and flutes and pan-pipes, and
the sounds of all instruments, and the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds; and
so his style will depend wholly on imitation
[
397b]
in voice and gesture, or will contain but a little of
pure narration.” “That too follows of
necessity,” he said. “These, then,” said I,
“were the two types of diction of which I was aking.”
“There are those two,” he replied. “Now does
not one of the two involve slight variations,
2 and if we assign a suitable pitch and rhythm to the diction,
is not the result that the right speaker speaks almost on the same note and
in one cadence—for the changes are slight—
[
397c]
and similarly in a rhythm of nearly the same
kind?” “Quite so.” “But what of the
other type? Does it not require the opposite, every kind of pitch and all
rhythms, if it too is to have appropriate expression, since it involves
manifold forms of variation?” “Emphatically
so.” “And do all poets and speakers hit upon one type or
the other of diction or some blend which they combine of both?”
[
397d]
“They must,” he
said. “What, then,” said I, are we to do? Shall we admit
all of these into the city, or one of the unmixed types, or the mixed
type?” “If my vote prevails,” he said,
“the unmixed imitator of the good.” “Nay, but
the mixed type also is pleasing, Adeimantus, and far most pleasing to boys
and their tutors and the great mob is the opposite of your
choice.” “Most pleasing it is.” “But
perhaps,” said I, “you would affirm it to be ill-suited
[
397e]
to our polity, because there is no
twofold or manifold man
3 among us, since every man
does one thing.” “It is not suited.”
“And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in
which we shall find the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his
cobbling, and the farmer a farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and
the soldier a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and
so of all the rest?” “True,” he said.
4 “If a man, then,
it seems,