[54] It is interesting to read in the first book of Strabo (pp. 15-19-25-27, &c.) the controversy which he carries on with Eratosthenes, as to the function of poets generally, and as to the purpose of Homer in particular. Eratosthenes considered Homer, and the other poets also, as having composed verses to please and interest, not to teach — ψυχαγωγίας χάριν, οὐ διδασκαλίας. Strabo (following the astronomer Hipparchus) controverts this opinion; affirming that poets had been the earliest philosophers and teachers of mankind, and that they must always continue to be the teachers of the multitude, who were unable to profit by history and philosophy. Strabo has the strongest admiration for Homer, not merely as a poet but as a moralising teacher. While Plato banishes Homer from his commonwealth, on the ground of pernicious ethical influence, Strabo claims for Homer the very opposite merit, and extols him as the best of all popular teachers — ἡ δὲ ποιητικὴ δημωφελεστέρα καὶ θέατρα πληροῦν δυναμένη· ἡ δὲ δὴ τοῦ Ὁμηροῦ ὑπερβαλλόντως … Ἄτε δὴ πρὸς τὸ παιδευτικὸν εἶδος τοὺς μύθους ἀναφέρων ὁ ποιητὴς ἐφρόντισε πολὺ μέρος τἀληθοῦς (Strabo, i. p. 20). The contradiction between Plato and Strabo is remarkable. Compare the beginning of Horace’s Epistle, i. 2. In the time of Strabo (more than three centuries after Plato’s death) there existed an abundant prose literature on matters of erudition, history, science, philosophy. The work of instruction was thus taken out of the poet’s hands; yet Strabo cannot bear to admit this. In the age of Plato the prose literature was comparatively small. Alexandria and its school did not exist: the poets covered a far larger portion of the entire ground of instruction.
As a striking illustration of the continued and unquestioning faith in the ancient legends, we may cite Galen: who, in a medical argument against Erasistratus, cites the cure of the daughters of Prœtus by Melampus as an incontestable authentic fact in medical evidence; putting to shame Erasistratus, who had not attended to it in his reasoning (Galen, De Atrâ Bile, T. v. p. 132, Kühn).
[55] Plato, Republic, x. pp. 606-607, iii. p. 387 B.
[56] Plato, Republic, x. pp. 598-599. When Plato attacks the poets so severely on the ground of their departure from truth and reality, and their false representations of human life — the poets might have retorted, that Plato departed no less from truth and reality in many parts of his Republic, and especially in his panegyric upon Justice; not to mention the various mythes which we read in Republic, Phædon, Phædrus, Politikus, &c.
Plato’s fictions are indeed ethical, intended to serve a pedagogic purpose; Homer's fictions are æsthetical, addressed to the fancy and emotions.
But it is not fair in Plato, the avowed champion of useful fiction, to censure the poets on the ground of their departing from truth.
Strict limits imposed by Plato on poets.
Even hymns to the Gods, however, may be composed in many different strains, according to the conception which the poet entertains of their character and attributes. The Homeric Hymns which we now possess could not be acceptable to Plato. While denouncing much of the current theological poetry, he assumes a censorial authority, in his joint character of Lykurgus and Sokrates,[57] to dictate what sort of poetical compositions shall be tolerated among his Guardians. He pronounces many of the tales in Homer and Hesiod to be not merely fictions, but mischievous fictions: not fit to be circulated, even if they had been true.
[57] Plutarch, Sympos. Quæst. viii. 2, 2, p. 719.
Ὁ Πλάτων, ἅτε δὴ τῷ Σωκράτει τὸν Λυκοῦργον ἀναμιγνύς, &c.