James Adam, Commentary on Plato, Republic, ed. James Adam, 10.598E

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[598E] ἀνάγκη ‐‐ ποιεῖν . The saying is attributed by Wilamowitz ( Phil. Unters. IV p. 285) to Sophocles himself, on what authority he does not say. Is he thinking of Athen. I 22 B μεθύων δὲ ἐποίει τὰς τραγῳδίας Αἰσχύλος, ὥς φησι Χαμαιλέων. Σοφοκλῆς γοῦν ὠνείδιζεν αὐτῷ ὅτι εἰ καὶ τὰ δέοντα ποιεῖ, ἀλλ’ οὐκ εἰδώς γε? In any case the reference ought not to be thus limited, nor ought we to suppose (with Dümmler and Stählin, ll. cc.) that Antisthenes alone is intended, for Plato seems to be alluding to a tolerably widespread view and one which was freely represented in Apologies of Poetry. Understood in its full significance, the theory of Poetry which Plato is here combating requires us to believe that a poet who can represent a general, a pilot etc., knows the art of generalship, pilotage etc. (cf. 599 C ff.), and we are told that Sophocles was actually made στρατηγός because of his Antigone (see the Argument ascribed to Aristophanes the grammarian). If we realise the part which Poetry, and especially the poetry of Homer, played in Greek education, and remember that Aristophanes makes Homer the teacher of τάξεις, ἀρετάς, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν, it is by no means extra vagant to suppose that such views were actually maintained in Plato's time, though Pericles for example had a different criterion of strategic ability when he told Sophocles that he ‘knew how to write poetry, but not how to command an army’ ( Περικλέης ποιέειν με ἔφη, στρατηγέειν δ’ οὐκ ἐπίστασθαι Athen. XIII 604 D). Cf. Ion 540 B—542 B and Stählin Stellung d. Poesie etc. p. 23 note 3. ‘The public,’ remarks Stählin, ‘whose views Plato here combats, allowed the authority of the poets to extend even to the domain of the particular arts. It was Plato who broke through this magic circle which surrounded Poetry.’ Aristotle followed in the same path, refusing to allow that a mistake in respect of some particular art is necessarily a flaw in the poetry: see Poet. 25. 1460^{b} 20 ff., 33 ff. Plato himself, of course, holds that poets are destitute of scientific knowledge, and compose their poems οὐ σοφίᾳ, ἀλλὰ φύσει τινὶ καὶ ἐνθουσιάζοντες Ap. 22 C : cf. also Phaedr. 245 A , Ion 533 D ff., Laws 719 C and Men. 99 C . The true Poet, according to Plato, is a seer: knowledge he has none, but instead of it intuition, enthusiasm and inspiration: he is in short ἔνθεος, because ἐπίπνους ὢν καὶ κατεχόμενος ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ( Men. l.c.). This view of Poetry is of course earlier than Plato: we meet with something like it in a striking fragment of Democritus ap. Dio Chrys. LIII 274 (quoted by Stählin l.c. p. 12) Ὅμηρος φύσεως λαχὼν θεαζούσης ἐπέων κόσμον ἐτεκτήνατο παντοίων, and Pindar likes to represent himself as the inspired mouthpiece of the Muses and Apollo. We cannot attain to a correct conception of Plato's aesthetic unless we are careful to remember that, although he refused to allow that the poet has knowledge, he did not deny him genius and inspiration. See also on 598 A supra.

πότερον μιμηταῖς κτλ. : ‘whether these men whom they have met are imitators, by whom they have been deceived’ etc. μιμηταῖς is of course predicative, and that is why τούτοις has no article. We certainly ought not (with Richards) to change τούτοις into τοιούτοις. Cf. IV 436 D note

Commentary on Plato, Republic. James Adam. ed. James Adam. Cambridge. 1926-1929.

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Commentary on Plato, Republic (English) (Plato. The Republic, Vol 1-2. Adam, James, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902-1903.)

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Πολιτεία Perseus (Platonis Opera Tomus IV: Tetralogia VIII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 10.598 focus

[598]
τὸν μὲν δὴ μιμητὴν ὡμολογήκαμεν. εἰπὲ δέ μοι περὶ 598a τοῦ ζωγράφου τόδε· πότερα ἐκεῖνο αὐτὸ τὸ ἐν τῇ φύσει ἕκαστον δοκεῖ σοι ἐπιχειρεῖν μιμεῖσθαι ἢ τὰ τῶν δημιουργῶν ἔργα;
τὰ τῶν δημιουργῶν, ἔφη.
ἆρα οἷα ἔστιν ἢ οἷα φαίνεται; τοῦτο γὰρ ἔτι διόρισον.
πῶς λέγεις; ἔφη.
ὧδε· κλίνη, ἐάντε ἐκ πλαγίου αὐτὴν θεᾷ ἐάντε καταντικρὺ ἢ ὁπῃοῦν, μή τι διαφέρει αὐτὴ ἑαυτῆς, ἢ διαφέρει μὲν οὐδέν, φαίνεται δὲ ἀλλοία; καὶ τἆλλα ὡσαύτως;
οὕτως, ἔφη· φαίνεται, διαφέρει δʼ οὐδέν. 598b
τοῦτο δὴ αὐτὸ σκόπει· πρὸς πότερον ἡ γραφικὴ πεποίηται περὶ ἕκαστον; πότερα πρὸς τὸ ὄν, ὡς ἔχει, μιμήσασθαι, ἢ πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον, ὡς φαίνεται, φαντάσματος ἢ ἀληθείας οὖσα μίμησις;
φαντάσματος, ἔφη.
πόρρω ἄρα που τοῦ ἀληθοῦς ἡ μιμητική ἐστιν καί, ὡς ἔοικεν, διὰ τοῦτο πάντα ἀπεργάζεται, ὅτι σμικρόν τι ἑκάστου ἐφάπτεται, καὶ τοῦτο εἴδωλον. οἷον ὁ ζωγράφος, φαμέν, ζωγραφήσει ἡμῖν σκυτοτόμον, τέκτονα, τοὺς ἄλλους δημιουργούς, 598c περὶ οὐδενὸς τούτων ἐπαΐων τῶν τεχνῶν· ἀλλʼ ὅμως παῖδάς γε καὶ ἄφρονας ἀνθρώπους, εἰ ἀγαθὸς εἴη ζωγράφος, γράψας ἂν τέκτονα καὶ πόρρωθεν ἐπιδεικνὺς ἐξαπατῷ ἂν τῷ δοκεῖν ὡς ἀληθῶς τέκτονα εἶναι.
τί δʼ οὔ;
ἀλλὰ γὰρ οἶμαι ὦ φίλε, τόδε δεῖ περὶ πάντων τῶν τοιούτων διανοεῖσθαι· ἐπειδάν τις ἡμῖν ἀπαγγέλλῃ περί του, ὡς ἐνέτυχεν ἀνθρώπῳ πάσας ἐπισταμένῳ τὰς δημιουργίας καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ὅσα εἷς ἕκαστος οἶδεν, οὐδὲν ὅτι οὐχὶ 598d ἀκριβέστερον ὁτουοῦν ἐπισταμένῳ, ὑπολαμβάνειν δεῖ τῷ τοιούτῳ ὅτι εὐήθης τις ἄνθρωπος, καί, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐντυχὼν γόητί τινι καὶ μιμητῇ ἐξηπατήθη, ὥστε ἔδοξεν αὐτῷ πάσσοφος εἶναι, διὰ τὸ αὐτὸς μὴ οἷός τʼ εἶναι ἐπιστήμην καὶ ἀνεπιστημοσύνην καὶ μίμησιν ἐξετάσαι.
ἀληθέστατα, ἔφη.
οὐκοῦν, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, μετὰ τοῦτο ἐπισκεπτέον τήν τε τραγῳδίαν καὶ τὸν ἡγεμόνα αὐτῆς Ὅμηρον, ἐπειδή τινων 598e ἀκούομεν ὅτι οὗτοι πάσας μὲν τέχνας ἐπίστανται, πάντα δὲ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια τὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ κακίαν, καὶ τά γε θεῖα· ἀνάγκη γὰρ τὸν ἀγαθὸν ποιητήν, εἰ μέλλει περὶ ὧν ἂν ποιῇ καλῶς ποιήσειν, εἰδότα ἄρα ποιεῖν, ἢ μὴ οἷόν τε εἶναι ποιεῖν.

Translations (1)

Republic Perseus (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 5-6. Shorey, Paul, translator. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1935-37 (printing).) — 10.598 focus

[598] We are in agreement, then, about the imitator. 598a But tell me now this about the painter. Do you think that what he tries to imitate is in each case that thing itself in nature or the works of the craftsmen? The works of the craftsmen, he said. Is it the reality of them or the appearance? Define that further point.¹ What do you mean? he said. This: Does a couch differ from itself according as you view it from the side or the front or in any other way? Or does it differ not at all in fact though it appears different, and so of other things? That is the way of it, he said: it appears other but differs not at all. 598b Consider, then, this very point. To which is painting directed in every case, to the imitation of reality as it is² or of appearance as it appears? Is it an imitation of a phantasm or of the truth? Of a phantasm,³ he said. Then the mimetic art is far removed⁴ from truth, and this, it seems, is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object and that a phantom⁵; as, for example, a painter, we say, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, 598c though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts,⁶ but nevertheless if he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and foolish men,⁷ and make them believe it to be a real carpenter. Why not? But for all that, my friend, this, I take it, is what we ought to bear in mind in all such cases: When anyone reports to us of someone, that he has met a man who knows all the crafts and everything else⁸ that men severally know, 598d and that there is nothing that he does not know⁹ more exactly than anybody else, our tacit rejoinder must be that he is a simple fellow, who apparently has met some magician or sleight-of-hand man and imitator and has been deceived by him into the belief that he is all-wise,¹⁰ because of his own inability to put to the proof and distinguish knowledge, ignorance¹¹ and imitation. Most true, he said.
Then, said I, have we not next to scrutinize tragedy and its leader Homer,¹² since some people tell us that these poets know all the arts 598e and all things human pertaining to virtue and vice, and all things divine? For the good poet, if he is to poetize things rightly, must, they argue, create with knowledge or else be unable to create.

James Adam Commentary on Plato, Republic 10.598E

ed. James Adam

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