[6]
“But have you failed to observe,” questioned Antisthenes, “that the rhapsodes,1 too, all know these poems?”“How could I,” he replied, “when I listen to their recitations nearly every day?”“Well, do you know any tribe of men,” went on the other, “more stupid than the rhapsodes?”“No, indeed,” answered Niceratus; “not I, I am sure.”“No,” said Socrates; “and the reason is clear: they do not know the inner meaning of the poems. But you have paid a good deal of money to Stesimbrotus, Anaximander, and many other Homeric critics, so that nothing of their valuable teaching can have escaped your knowledge.
This text is part of:
1 These professional reciters of epic poetry are represented as being criticized by Socrates, in much the same way as here, in Xenophon's Memorabilia, IV. ii. 10 and in Plato's Ion.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 4. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1979.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
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.