Page - 145 - in The Complete Plato

your art extend to Hesiod and Archilochus, or to Homer only? ION: To Homer only; he is in himself quite enough. SOCRATES: Are there any things about which Homer and Hesiod agree? ION: Yes; in my opinion there are a good many. SOCRATES: And can you interpret better what Homer says, or what Hesiod says, about these matters in which they agree? ION: I can interpret them equally well, Socrates, where they agree. SOCRATES: But what about matters in which they do not agree?—for example, about divination, of which both Homer and Hesiod have something to say,— ION: Very true: SOCRATES: Would you or a good prophet be a better interpreter of what these two poets say about divination, not only when they agree, but when they disagree? ION: A prophet. SOCRATES: And if you were a prophet, would you not be able to interpret them when they disagree as well as when they agree? ION: Clearly. SOCRATES: But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer sings? ION: Very true, Socrates. SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same? ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer. SOCRATES: What, in a worse way? ION: Yes, in a far worse. SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way? ION: He is incomparably better. 145