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.
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 but rather to commend the world below, intimating 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 he a serf on the land of a poor and portionless
man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought.
We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,
Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should be seen both of mortals and immortals.
And again: