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Ἀλλ’ ἀποκρύπτειν χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τόν γε ποιητήν, καὶ μὴ παράγειν μηδὲ διδάσκειν· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παιδαρίοισιν ἐστὶ διδάσκαλος ὅστις φράζει, τοῖσιν δ’ ἡβῶσι ποιηταί. πάνυ δὴ δεῖ χρηστὰ λέγειν ἡμᾶς. |
Compare the words of Pluto which conclude the Ranæ, 1497.
Plato, Repub. x. p. 598 D-E. ἐπειδή τινων ἀκούομεν ὅτι οὗτοι (Homer and the poets) πάσας μὲν τέχνας ἐπίσανται, πάντα δὲ τἀνθρώπεια τὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ κακίαν, καὶ τά γε θεῖα, &c. Also Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 810-811; Ion, pp. 536 A, 541 B: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6, where we learn that Nikeratus could repeat by heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey.
[48] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 810. ὅλους ποιητὰς ἐκμανθάνοντας, &c.
[49] It was to gain this facility that Kritias and Alkibiades, as Xenophon tells us, frequented the society of Sokrates, who (as Xenophon also tells us) “handled persons conversing with him just as he pleased” (Memor. i. 2, 14-18.)
A speaker in one of the Orations of Lysias (Orat. viii. Κακολογιῶν, s. 12) considers this power of arguing a disputed case as one of the manifestations τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν — Καὶ ἐγὼ μὲν ᾤμην φιλοσοφοῦντας αὐτοὺς περὶ τοῦ πράγματος ἀντιλέγειν τὸν ἐναντίον λόγον· οἱ δ’ ἄρα οὐκ ἀντέλεγον ἀλλ’ ἀντέπραττον.
Compare the curious oration of Demosthenes against Lakritus, where the speaker imputes to Lakritus this abuse of argumentative power, as having been purchased by him at a large price from the teaching of Isokrates the Sophist, pp. 928-937-938.
[50] Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 57-60.
Plato’s idea of the purpose which poetry and music ought to serve in education.
It is this educational practice — common to a certain extent among Greeks, but more developed at Athens than elsewhere[51] — which Plato has in his mind, when he draws up the outline of a musical education for his youthful Guardians. He does not intend it as a scheme for fostering the highest intellectual powers, or for exalting men into philosophers — which he reserves as an ulterior improvement, to be communicated at a later period of life, and only to a chosen few — the large majority being supposed incapable of appropriating it. His musical training (co-operating with the gymnastical) is intended to form the character of the general body of Guardians: to implant in them from early childhood a peculiar vein of sentiments, habits, emotions and emotional beliefs, ethical esteem and disesteem, love and hatred, &c., to inspire them (in his own phrase) with love of the beautiful or honourable.