BOOK III.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
Steph. 386Republic III. SOCRATES, ADEIMANTUS. The discouraging lessons of mythology. SUCH then, I said, are our principles of theology—some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to honour the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another.
Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.
But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take Baway the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?
Certainly not, he said.
And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?
Impossible.
The description of the world below in Homer. Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile but rather to commend the world below, Cintimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.
That will be our duty, he said.
Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,
‘I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought1.’
We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,
D ‘Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should be seen both of mortals and immortals2.’ 69
And again:—
‘O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly form but no mind at all3!’
Again of Tiresias:—
‘[To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he alone should be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades4.’
Again:—
‘The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting her fate, leaving manhood and youth5.’
Again:—
387 ‘And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the earth6.’
And,—
‘As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together as they moved7.’
B Such tales to be rejected. And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
Undoubtedly.
Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe the world below—Cocytus and Styx, Cghosts under the earth, and sapless shades, and any similar words of which the very mention causes a shudder to pass through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.
There is a real danger, he said.
Then we must have no more of them.
True.
Another and a nobler strain must be composed and sung by us. 70
Clearly.
D And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wailings of famous men?
They will go with the rest.
The effeminate and pitiful strains of famous men, and yet more of the gods, must also be banished. But shall we be right in getting rid of them? Reflect: our principle is that the good man will not consider death terrible to any other good man who is his comrade.
Source notes
1 Od. xi. 489.
2 Il. xx. 64.
3 Il. xxiii. 103.
4 Od. x. 495.
5 Il. xvi. 856.
6 Ib. xxiii. 100.
7 Od. xxiv. 6.