[125] Aristotle, Poetic. c. 4. p. 1449 a.
The ethical repugnance expressed by Plato against the many-sided and deceptive spirit of tragic and comic compositions, is also expressed in the censure said to have been pronounced by Solon against Thespis, when the latter first produced his dramas (Plutarch, Solon, 29; Diog. Laert. i. 59).
This aversion peculiar to himself, not shared either by oligarchical politicians, or by other philosophers.
However Plato — while he tolerates no poetry except in so far as it produces ethical correction or regulation of the emotions, and blames as hurtful the poet who simply touches or kindles emotion — is in a peculiar manner averse to dramatic poetry, with its diversity of assumed characters and its obligation of giving speech to different points of view. His aversion had been exhibited before, both in the Republic and in the Gorgias:[126] but it reappears here in the Treatise De Legibus, with this aggravating feature — that the revolution in music and poetry is represented as generating cause of a deteriorated character and an ultra-democratical polity of Athens. This (as I have before remarked) is a sentiment peculiar to Plato. For undoubtedly, oligarchical politicians (such as Thucydides, Nikias, Kritias), who agreed with him in disliking the democracy, would never have thought of ascribing what they disliked to such a cause as alteration in the Athenian music and poetry. They would much more have agreed with Aristotle,[127] when he attributes the important change both in the character and polity of the Athenian people after the Persian invasion, to the events of that invasion itself — to the heroic and universal efforts made by the citizens, on shipboard as well as on land, against the invading host — and to the necessity for continuing those efforts by organising the confederacy of Delos. Hence arose a new spirit of self-reliance and enterprise — or rather an intensification of what had already begun after the expulsion of Hippias and the reform by Kleisthenes — which rendered the previous constitutional forms too narrow to give satisfaction.[128] The creation of new and grander forms of poetry may fairly be looked upon as one symptom of this energetic general outburst: but it is in no way a primary or causal fact, as Plato wishes us to believe. Nor can Plato himself have supposed it to be so, at the time when he composed his Menexenus: wherein the events of the post-Xerxeian period are presented in a light very different from that in which he viewed them when he wrote his Leges — presented with glowing commendations on his countrymen.
[126] Plato, Republ. iii. pp. 395-396, x. p. 605 B; Gorgias, p. 502 B; Legg. iv. p. 719 B.
Aristotle takes a view of tragedy quite opposed to that of Plato: he considers it as calculated to purge or purify the emotions of fear, compassion, &c. (Aristot. Poet. c. 13. Compare Politic. viii. 7, 9). Unfortunately the Poetica exist only as a fragment, so that his doctrine about κάθαρσις is only declared and not fully developed.
Rousseau (in his Lettre à d’Alembert Sur les Spectacles, p. 33 seq.) impugns this doctrine of Aristotle, and condemns theatrical representations, partly with arguments similar to those of Plato, partly with others of his own.
[127] Aristotel. Politic. v. 4, p. 1304, a. 20; ii. 12, p. 1274, a. 12; viii. 6, 1340, a. 30.
[128] Herodot. v. 78.