[8] Now since this is so, let the young man, when we set him to reading poems, not be prepossessed with any such opinions about those good and great names, as, for instance, that the men were wise and honest, consummate kings, and standards of all virtue and uprightness. For he will be greatly injured if he approves everything, and is in a state of wonderment over it, but resents nothing, refusing even to listen or accept the opinion of him who, on the contrary, censures persons that do and say such things as these:
This I would, O Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, That not one escape death of all the Trojans living And of the Greeks; but that you and I elude destruction, So that we alone may raze Troy’s sacred bulwarks,
1
and
Saddest of all the sad sounds that I heard was the cry of Cassandra Priam’s daughter, whom Clytemnestra craftily planning Slew o’er my body,
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and
That I seduce the girl and ensure her hate for my father. So I obeyed her and did it,
3
and
Father Zeus, none other of the gods is more baleful.
4
Let the young man, then, not get into the habit of commending anything like this, nor let him be plausible and adroit in making excuses or in contriving some specious quibbles to explain base actions, but rather let him cherish the belief that poetry is an imitation of character and lives, and of men who are not perfect or spotless or unassailable in all respects, but pervaded by emotions, false opinions, and sundry forms of ignorance, who yet through inborn goodness frequently change their ways for the better. For if the young man is so trained, and his understanding so framed, that he feels elation and a sympathetic enthusiasm over noble words and deeds, and an aversion and repugnance for the mean, such training will render his perusal of poetry harmless. But the man who admires everything, and accommodates himself to everything, whose judgement, because of his preconceived opinion, is enthralled by the heroic names, will, like those who copy Plato’s stoop or Aristotle’s lisp, unwittingly become inclined to conform to much that is base. One ought not timorously, or as though under the spell of religious dread in a holy place, to shiver with awe at everything, and fall prostrate, but should rather acquire the habit of exclaiming with confidence
wrong and
improper no less than
right and
proper. For example, Achilles summons an assembly of the soldiers, who are suffering from an illness, since he is most impatient of all over the slow progress of the war because of his conspicuous position and reputation on the field; moreover, because he has some knowledge of medicine, and perceives now after the ninth day, on which these maladies naturally reach their crisis, that the disease is out of the ordinary and not the result of familiar causes, he does not harangue the multitude when he rises to speak, but makes himself an adviser to the king:
Son of Atreus, now, as I think, are we destined to wander Back to seek our homes again.
5
Rightly, moderately, and properly is this put. But after the seer has said that he fears the wrath of the most powerful of the Greeks, Achilles no longer speaks rightly and moderately, when he swears that nobody shall lay hands on the seer while he himself is alive,
No, not though you name Agamemnon,
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thus making plain his slight regard and his contempt for the leader. A moment later his irritation becomes more acute, and his impulse is to draw his sword with intent to do murder; not rightly, either for honour or for expediency. Again, later, repenting,
Back he thrust his massive blade once more to its scabbard, Nor ignored Athena’s words,
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this time rightly and honourably, because, although he could not altogether eradicate his anger, yet before doing anything irreparable he put it aside and checked it by making it obedient to his reason. Then again, although Agamemnon is ridiculous in his actions and words at the Assembly, yet in the incidents touching Chryseis he is more dignified and kingly. For whereas Achilles, as Briseis was being led away,
Burst into tears and withdrawing apart sat aloof from his comrades,
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Agamemnon, as he in person put aboard the ship, and gave up and sent away, the woman of whom, a moment before, he has said that he cared more for her than for his wedded wife, committed no amorous or disgraceful act. Then again, Phoenix, cursed by his father on account of the concubine, says:
True in my heart I had purposed to slay him with keenpointed dagger, Save that one of the deathless gods put an end to my anger, Bringing to mind the people’s talk and men’s many reproaches, Lest I be known among the Greeks as my father’s slayer.
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Now Aristarchus removed these lines from the text through fear, but they are right in view of the occasion, since Phoenix is trying to teach Achilles what sort of a thing anger is, and how many wild deeds men are ready to do from temper, if they do not use reason or hearken to those who try to soothe them. So also the poet introduces Meleager angry at his fellow-citizens, and later mollified, and he rightly finds fault with his emotions, but, on the other hand, his refusal to yield, his resistance, his mastery over them, and his change of heart the poet commends as good and expedient.Now in these cases the difference is manifest; but in cases where Homer’s judgement is not made clear, a distinction is to be drawn by directing the young man’s attention in some such manner as the following: If, on the one hand, Nausicaa, after merely looking at a strange man, Odysseus, and experiencing Calypso’s emotions toward him, being, as she was, a wanton child and at the age for marriage, utters such foolish words as these to her maid-servants,
How I wish that a man like this might be called my husband, Living here with us, and be contented to tarry,
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then are her boldness and lack of restraint to be blamed. But if, on the other hand, she sees into the character of the man from his words, and marvels at his conversation, so full of good sense, and then prays that she may be the consort of such a person rather than of some sailor man or dancing man of her own townsmen, then it is quite right to admire her. And again, when Penelope enters into conversation with the suitors, not holding herself aloof, and they favour her with gifts of garments and other apparel, Odysseus is pleased
Since she had coaxed all these gifts from them, and had cozened their senses.
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If, on the one hand, he rejoices at the receipt of the presents and the profit, then in his prostitution of his wife he outdoes Poliager, who is satirized in the comedy as
Poliager blest Who keeps a Cyprian goat to yield him wealth.
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But if, on the other hand, he thinks that he shall have them more in his power, while they are confident because of their hopes and blind to the future, then his pleasure and confidence has a reasonable justification. Similarly, in the enumeration of his possessions which the Phaeacians had put ashore with him before they sailed away, if on the one hand, upon finding himself in such solitude and in such uncertainty and ambiguity regarding his surroundings, he really fears about his possessions,
Lest the men on the ship had sailed away with something,
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then it is quite right to pity or indeed even to loathe his avarice. But if, on the other hand, he, as some say, being of two minds whether he were in Ithaca, thinks that the safety of his possessions is a demonstration of the rectitude of the Phaeacians (for otherwise they would not have carried him for nothing, put him ashore in a strange land, and left him there, at the same time keeping their hands off his possessions), then he makes use of no mean proof, and it is quite right to praise his forethought. But some critics find fault also with the very act of putting him ashore, if this really was done while he was asleep, and assert that the Etruscans still preserve a tradition that Odysseus was naturally sleepy, and that for this reason most people found him difficult to converse with. Yet if his sleep was not real, but if, being ashamed to send away the Phaeacians without gifts and entertainment, and at the same time unable to elude his enemies if the Phaeacians were in company with him, he provided himself with a cloak for his embarrassment in feigning himself asleep, then they find this acceptable.By indicating these things to the young, we shall not allow them to acquire any leaning toward such characters as are mean, but rather an emulation of the better, and a preference for them, if we unhesitatingly award censure to the one class and commendation to the other. It is particularly necessary to do this with tragedies in which plausible and artful words are framed to accompany disreputable and knavish actions. For the statement of Sophocles
14
is not altogether true when he says:
From unfair deed fair word cannot proceed.
For, as a fact, he is wont to provide for mean characters and unnatural actions alluring words and humane reasons. And you observe also that his companion-at-arms in the dramatic art has represented Phaedra
15
as preferring the charge against Theseus that it was because of his derelictions that she fell in love with Hippolytus. Of such sort, too, are the frank lines, aimed against Hecuba, which in the Trojan Women
16
he gives to Helen, who there expresses her feeling that Hecuba ought rather to be the one to suffer punishment because she brought into the world the man who was the cause of Helen’s infidelity. Let the young man not form the habit of regarding any one of these things as witty and adroit, and let him not smile indulgently, either, at such displays of verbal ingenuity, but let him loathe the words of licentiousness even more than its deeds. Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat. Plutarch. Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1927.
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