Plato, Republic

[380a] was the doing of Themis and Zeus; nor again must we permit our youth to hear what Aeschylus says—“ A god implants the guilty cause in men
When he would utterly destroy a house,
”Aesch.¹ but if any poets compose a 'Sorrows of Niobe,' the poem that contains these iambics, or a tale of the Pelopidae or of Troy, or anything else of the kind, we must either forbid them to say that these woes are the work of God, or they must devise some such interpretation as we now require, and must declare that what God [380b] did was righteous and good, and they were benefited² by their chastisement. But that they were miserable who paid the penalty, and that the doer of this was God, is a thing that the poet must not be suffered to say; if on the other hand he should say that for needing chastisement the wicked were miserable and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that we must allow. But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evil to anyone, we must contend in every way that neither should anyone assert this in his own city if it is to be well governed, nor anyone hear it, [380c] neither younger nor older, neither telling a story in meter or without meter; for neither would the saying of such things, if they are said, be holy, nor would they be profitable to us or concordant with themselves.” “I cast my vote with yours for this law,” he said, “and am well pleased with it.” “This, then,” said I, “will be one of the laws and patterns concerning the gods³ to which speakers and poets will be required to conform, that God is not the cause of all things, but only of the good.” “And an entirely satisfactory one,” he said. [380d] “And what of this, the second. Do you think that God is a wizard and capable of manifesting himself by design, now in one aspect, now in another, at one time⁴ himself changing and altering his shape in many transformations and at another deceiving us and causing us to believe such things about him; or that he is simple and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form?” “I cannot say offhand,” he replied. “But what of this: If anything went out from⁵ its own form, would it not be displaced and changed, either by itself [380e] or by something else?” “Necessarily.” “Is it not true that to be altered and moved⁶ by something else happens least to things that are in the best condition, as, for example, a body by food and drink and toil, and plants⁷ by the heat of the sun and winds and similar influences—is it not true that the healthiest and strongest is least altered?”