Good, I said ; then you call him who is third in the descent from nature an imitator ?
Certainly, he said.
And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth ?
That appears to be so.
Then about the imitator we are agreed. And what about the painter ? I would like to know whether he may be thought to imitate that which originally exists in nature, or only the creations of artists ?
The latter.
As they are or as they appear ? you have still to determine this.
What do you mean ?
I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same of all things.
Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent.
Now let me ask you another question : Which is the art of painting designed to be — an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear — of appearance or of reality ?
Of appearance.
Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example : A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts ; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.
Certainly.
And whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man — whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.
Most true.
And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them ; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities ? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well ?
The question, he said, should by all means be considered.
Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch ? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him ?
I should say not.
The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations ; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair ; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.
Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honor and profit.
Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer ; not about medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer : we are not going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at second-hand ; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them. “Friend Homer,” then we say to him, “if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third — not an image maker or imitator — and if you are able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what State was ever better governed by your help ? The good order of Lacedaemon is due to Lycurgus, and many other cities, great and small, have been similarly benefited by others ; but who says that you have been a good legislator to them and have done them any good ? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us ; but what city has anything to say about you ?” Is there any city which he might name ?
I think not, said Glaucon ; not even the Homerids themselves pretend that he was a legislator.
Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on successfully by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was alive ?
There is not.
Or is there any invention of his, applicable to the arts or to human life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian, and other ingenious men have conceived, which is attributed to him ?
There is absolutely nothing of the kind.
But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately a guide or teacher of any ? Had he in his lifetime friends who loved to associate with him, and who handed down to posterity a Homeric way of life, such as was established by Pythagoras, who was so greatly beloved for his wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the order which was named after him ?
Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For, surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when he was alive ?
Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind — if he had possessed knowledge, and not been a mere imitator — can you imagine, I say, that he would not have had many followers, and been honored and loved by them ? Protagoras of Abdera and Prodicus of Ceos and a host of others have only to whisper to their contemporaries : “You will never be able to manage either your own house or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers of education” — and this ingenious device of theirs has such an effect in making men love them that their companions all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go about as rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind virtuous ? Would they not have been as unwilling to part with them as with gold, and have compelled them to stay at home with them ? Or, if the master would not stay, then the disciples would have followed him about everywhere, until they had got education enough ?
Yes, Socrates, that, I think, is quite true.
Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators ; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach ? The poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling ; and his picture is good enough for those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colors and figures.
Quite so.
In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colors of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them ; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well — such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have. And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
Yes, he said.
They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but only blooming ; and now the bloom of youth has passed away from them ?
Exactly.