Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SOCRATES: Welcome, Ion. Where have you come from to visit us this time? Home to Ephesus? ION: Not at all, Socrates — from Epidaurus, from the festival of Asclepius. SOCRATES: Don't tell me the Epidaurians hold a rhapsode's competition for the god too? ION: They certainly do, and for the other arts of the Muses as well. SOCRATES: Well then? Did you compete for us? And how did it go? ION: We carried off first prize, Socrates. SOCRATES: Excellent — see to it we win at the Panathenaea too. ION: That will happen, god willing. SOCRATES: You know, Ion, I've often envied you rhapsodes your craft. It's fitting that your bodies always be got up handsomely, as befits your art, and that you look as attractive as possible — and at the same time you're required to spend your days among many fine poets, above all Homer, the best and most inspired of them, and to learn his thought through and through, not just his verses. That's something to envy. No one could ever become a good rhapsode without grasping what the poet is saying — the rhapsode has to become an interpreter of the poet's thought for his listeners, and it's impossible to do that well without understanding what the poet means. All of this deserves envy. ION: True, Socrates. That's certainly where I've put in the most effort in my art, and I believe I speak about Homer better than anyone alive — neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor Stesimbrotus of Thasos, nor Glaucon, nor anyone else who has ever lived has had as many fine things to say about Homer as I do. SOCRATES: Good to hear, Ion — clearly you won't begrudge me a demonstration. ION: It really is worth hearing, Socrates, how splendidly I've dressed up Homer — so much so that I think I deserve to be crowned with a gold wreath by the sons of Homer.
SOCRATES: Well, I'll certainly find time to hear you at length. But first answer me this: are you skilled at speaking about Homer alone, or about Hesiod and Archilochus too? ION: Not at all — only about Homer. That seems to me enough. SOCRATES: Is there anything on which Homer and Hesiod say the same thing? ION: I think there's a good deal. SOCRATES: Then on those points, could you explain what Homer says better, or what Hesiod says? ION: Equally well, Socrates, on the points where they say the same thing. SOCRATES: But what about the points where they don't agree? Homer and Hesiod both speak, say, about the seer's art. ION: They certainly do. SOCRATES: Well then — of what the two poets say alike and what they say differently about divination, could you explain it better, or one of the skilled seers? ION: One of the seers. SOCRATES: And if you were a seer, wouldn't you, being able to explain the points where they agree, also know how to explain the points where they differ? ION: Obviously. SOCRATES: Then why is it that you're skilled about Homer but not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does Homer talk about different things than all the other poets do? Doesn't he deal mostly with war, and with how people — good and bad, ordinary folk and craftsmen — deal with one another, and with how the gods deal with each other and with humans, and with what happens in the heavens and in Hades, and with the births of gods and heroes? Isn't that what Homer's poetry is about? ION: True, Socrates. SOCRATES: And the other poets — isn't it the same subjects? ION: Yes, but, Socrates, not in the same way Homer treats them. SOCRATES: How, then — worse? ION: Far worse. SOCRATES: And Homer better? ION: Better, by Zeus. SOCRATES: Well then, my dear Ion, when a number of people are talking about arithmetic and one of them speaks best, surely someone will recognize who's speaking well? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: And is it the same person who recognizes those speaking badly, or someone else? ION: The same person, surely. SOCRATES: And that's the one who has the skill of arithmetic? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Now, when a number of people are discussing what foods are healthy, and one speaks best, will one person recognize the one speaking best, and a different person the one speaking worse — or the same person? ION: Clearly the same. SOCRATES: Who is that? What's he called? ION: A doctor.
SOCRATES: So, to sum up, we're saying that the same person will always be able to tell, when a number of people are speaking on the same subject, who speaks well and who badly — or if he can't recognize the one who speaks badly, then clearly not the one who speaks well either, on that same subject. ION: That's so. SOCRATES: Then the same man becomes skilled at judging both? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: And you say that Homer and the other poets — including Hesiod and Archilochus — speak on the same subjects, but not equally well, but one speaks well and the others worse? ION: And I say that truly. SOCRATES: Then if you can recognize the one speaking well, you'd also recognize that the ones speaking worse are speaking worse. ION: So it seems. SOCRATES: Then, my excellent friend, if we say Ion is equally skilled about Homer and about the other poets, we won't be wrong, since he himself agrees that the same person will be a competent judge of everyone speaking on the same subjects, and that the poets pretty much all treat the same things. ION: Then what on earth is the reason, Socrates, why when someone discusses another poet I pay no attention and can't contribute anything worthwhile — I simply nod off — but the moment someone mentions Homer, I'm wide awake at once, paying attention, and full of things to say? SOCRATES: That's not hard to guess, my friend — it's obvious to anyone that you're unable to speak about Homer by skill and knowledge. If it were by skill, you'd be able to speak about all the other poets too — poetry, after all, is a single whole. Isn't that so? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Then whenever someone masters any other art as a whole, the same method of inquiry applies to all the arts alike? Do you want me to explain what I mean by this, Ion? ION: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, I do — I enjoy listening to you clever people. SOCRATES: I wish you were right, Ion. But it's you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose works you sing, who are the clever ones — I say nothing but the truth, as you'd expect from an ordinary man. Take this very question I just asked you — see how commonplace and ordinary a thing it is, one anybody could grasp, that the method of inquiry is the same whenever one masters an entire art. Let's take it up in argument: painting is a single art as a whole, isn't it? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: And there are, and have been, many painters, both good and bad? ION: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Now have you ever met someone who is skilled at pointing out what Polygnotus son of Aglaophon paints well and what he doesn't, but is helpless when it comes to the other painters — who, whenever someone displays the works of other painters, nods off and is at a loss and has nothing to contribute, but when it's time to give an opinion about Polygnotus or whichever other single painter you like, wakes up, pays attention, and is full of things to say? ION: No, by Zeus, I certainly haven't. SOCRATES: And in sculpture, have you ever met anyone who is skilled at explaining the good work of Daedalus son of Metion, or Epeius son of Panopeus, or Theodorus of Samos, or some other single sculptor, but is at a loss and nods off before the works of the other sculptors, having nothing to say? ION: No, by Zeus, I haven't seen that either. SOCRATES: And surely, I think, not in flute-playing either, nor in lyre-playing, nor in singing to the lyre, nor in rhapsody have you ever seen a man who is skilled at explaining Olympus, or Thamyras, or Orpheus, or Phemius the rhapsode of Ithaca, but who is at a loss about Ion of Ephesus and can't tell what he performs well and what not. ION: I have nothing to say against that, Socrates. But this much I know about myself: that I speak about Homer better than anyone alive, and have plenty to say, and everyone else agrees I speak well — but not about the others. So consider what that means. SOCRATES: I am considering it, Ion, and I'm about to show you what I think it is. It is not a skill in you for speaking well about Homer, as I was saying just now, but a divine power that moves you — like the power in the stone that Euripides called the Magnesian stone, though most people call it the stone of Heracles. For that stone not only draws iron rings themselves, but also puts a power into the rings so that they in turn can do the very thing the stone does — draw other rings — so that sometimes a long chain of iron pieces and rings hangs suspended from one another; and the power in all of them depends on that stone. In just the same way the Muse makes some people inspired herself, and from these inspired ones a chain of others, catching the inspiration in turn, hangs suspended.
SOCRATES: For all the good epic poets produce all these fine poems not by skill, but because they are inspired and possessed — and the good lyric poets likewise. Just as the Corybantic dancers dance without being in their right minds, so the lyric poets compose those fine songs without being in their right minds. Once they embark upon harmony and rhythm, they are seized with Bacchic frenzy and possession — just as the Bacchant women, when possessed, draw milk and honey from rivers, but not when in their right minds — and the soul of the lyric poets does this same thing, as they themselves say. For the poets tell us, surely, that they gather their songs from honey-flowing springs, from certain glades and gardens of the Muses, and bring them to us like bees, flying just as the bees do. And they speak the truth. For a poet is a light and winged and sacred thing, and he is not able to compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses and his mind is no longer in him. So long as a person retains that possession, he is powerless to compose or to utter oracles. Since, then, poets compose and say many fine things about their subjects not by skill — as you do about Homer — but by divine allotment, each is capable of doing well only that one thing toward which the Muse has driven him: one man dithyrambs, another encomia, another dance-songs, another epic verse, another iambics — and in everything else each of them is poor. For it is not by skill that they say these things, but by divine power — since if they knew by skill how to speak well on one subject, they would know how on all the others too. That is why the god takes away the minds of these men and uses them as his servants, just as he uses oracle-singers and holy seers, so that we who listen may know that it is not these men who say these things of such great worth, men who have no mind in them, but that it is the god himself who speaks, and who addresses us through them. The strongest proof of this argument is Tynnichus of Chalcis, who never composed a single poem worth anyone's remembering, except the paean that everyone sings, nearly the most beautiful of all songs, which — exactly as he himself says — was simply 'a find of the Muses.' In this case above all, I think, the god has shown us, so that we should have no doubt, that these beautiful poems are not human, nor the work of humans, but divine, the work of gods, and that the poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each possessed by whatever power holds him. To show us this, the god deliberately sang the most beautiful song of all through the poorest poet. Or don't you think I'm speaking the truth, Ion?
ION: Yes, by Zeus, I do — your words somehow take hold of my soul, Socrates, and it seems to me that good poets are, by divine dispensation, interpreters for us of things that come from the gods. SOCRATES: And you rhapsodes, in turn, interpret what the poets say? ION: That too is true. SOCRATES: So you become interpreters of interpreters? ION: Exactly so. SOCRATES: Then tell me this, Ion, and don't hide anything I ask you. When you deliver a fine performance of the verses and strike your audience most powerfully — say, when you sing of Odysseus leaping onto the threshold, revealing himself to the suitors and pouring his arrows out before his feet, or of Achilles charging at Hector, or one of the pitiful scenes about Andromache, or Hecuba, or Priam — at that moment are you in your right mind, or are you carried out of yourself, so that your soul, in a kind of divine possession, believes itself to be among the events you describe, whether in Ithaca or in Troy or wherever the verses happen to be set? ION: How vivid a proof you've given me there, Socrates — for I won't hide the truth from you. Whenever I speak of something pitiful, my eyes fill with tears; and whenever it's something fearful or terrible, my hair stands on end with fright and my heart pounds. SOCRATES: Well then — shall we say, Ion, that a man is in his right mind at such a moment, when, decked out in embroidered robes and golden crowns, he weeps at sacrifices and festivals, though he has lost none of his finery, or feels more fear than if he stood among twenty thousand friendly people, with no one stripping him or doing him any harm? ION: No, by Zeus, not at all, Socrates, to tell the truth. SOCRATES: Do you know that you rhapsodes produce this very same effect in most of your audience too? ION: I know it very well indeed — I watch them every time from up on the platform, weeping and casting terrible looks and awestruck at what is being said. I have to pay them the closest attention, since if I set them weeping, I myself will laugh, as I collect my fee, but if I set them laughing, I myself will weep, at losing it.
SOCRATES: Do you know, then, that this spectator is the last of the rings I was telling you about, which draw their power from one another by way of the Heraclean stone? The middle one is you, the rhapsode and actor, and the first is the poet himself. The god, through all of these, pulls the soul of men wherever he wishes, suspending their power from one another. And just as from that stone a great chain is suspended — of choral dancers, and instructors, and assistant instructors — hanging off to the side from the rings that depend upon the Muse. One poet is suspended from one Muse, another from another — we call it 'being possessed,' but it is much the same thing, for he is indeed held fast. And from these first rings, the poets, others in turn hang suspended, one from one poet, one from another, and are inspired — some from Orpheus, some from Musaeus, but most of them are possessed and held by Homer. You, Ion, are one of these: you are possessed by Homer, and whenever anyone sings the work of some other poet, you fall asleep and are at a loss for words, but whenever someone strikes up a strain of this poet, you wake at once, your soul dances, and you are full of things to say. For it is not by skill or knowledge that you speak of Homer, but by divine dispensation and possession — just as the Corybantic revelers perceive keenly only that one strain which belongs to the god by whom they are possessed, and for that strain they have plenty of gestures and words, but care nothing for the rest. So too with you, Ion: when Homer is mentioned, you are full of resource, but at the mention of any other poet, you are at a loss. And the reason for this, which you asked me about — why you have plenty to say about Homer and nothing about the rest — is that it is not by skill that you are so formidable a praiser of Homer, but by divine dispensation. ION: You put it well, Socrates. Yet I would be astonished if you could speak so well as to persuade me that I praise Homer while possessed and out of my mind. I don't think you'd think so either, if you heard me speaking about Homer. SOCRATES: I am indeed willing to hear it — but not before you answer me this. Of the things Homer speaks of, on which subject do you speak well? Surely not on all of them. ION: Be assured, Socrates — on every one of them, without exception. SOCRATES: Surely not on those matters too, of which you happen to have no knowledge, while Homer speaks of them? ION: And what sort of things are these, that Homer speaks of and I don't know?
SOCRATES: Doesn't Homer, in many places, speak a great deal about various crafts? Take chariot-driving, for instance — if I can recall the lines, I'll tell you them. ION: No, I'll say them — I remember them. SOCRATES: Tell me, then, what Nestor says to his son Antilochus, advising him to be careful at the turning-post in the horse race held for Patroclus. ION: 'And lean yourself,' he says, 'in the well-polished chariot, gently to the left of the pair; and goad the right-hand horse, shouting to him, and give him rein with your hands. And let the left-hand horse graze close in against the post, so that the hub of the well-made wheel seems to reach its very edge — but beware of striking the stone.' SOCRATES: That's enough. Now, Ion, as to these verses — whether Homer speaks correctly or not — which of the two would judge better, a doctor or a charioteer? ION: A charioteer, surely. SOCRATES: Because he has that skill, or for some other reason? ION: No — because he has the skill. SOCRATES: And hasn't each of the skills been assigned by god a particular function it is capable of understanding? For surely what we know by the pilot's skill, we won't also know by the doctor's. ION: No, indeed. SOCRATES: Nor will what we know by medicine, we know also by carpentry. ION: No, indeed. SOCRATES: And so it goes for all the skills — what we know by one skill, we will not know by another? But answer me this first: do you say that one thing is one skill, and another thing another? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Is it as I judge it — when one skill has knowledge of one set of matters, and another has knowledge of another, I call one skill by one name and the other by another — is that how you judge it too? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: For if there were some single knowledge of the very same matters, why would we say that one is one skill and the other another, when the same things could be known from both? Just as I know that these fingers here are five, and you, like me, know the very same thing about them — and if I asked you whether it is by the very same skill, arithmetic, that you and I both know the same things, or by a different one, you would surely say by the same one. ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well then, tell me now what I was about to ask you just now: does it seem to you to hold in the case of all the skills, that the same skill must know the same things, while a different skill, if indeed it is different, must know different things? ION: That is how it seems to me, Socrates. SOCRATES: So whoever lacks a given skill will not be able to know well what is said or done in that skill? ION: True. SOCRATES: Now then, as for those verses you recited — whether Homer speaks well or not — will you know this better, or a charioteer? ION: A charioteer. SOCRATES: For you are a rhapsode, after all, not a charioteer. ION: Yes. SOCRATES: And the rhapsode's skill is different from the charioteer's? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: If it's different, then, it is knowledge of different matters. ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Well then — what about when Homer tells how Hecamede, Nestor's concubine, gives the wounded Machaon a potion to drink? He puts it something like this: 'in Pramnian wine,' he says, 'she grated goat's cheese with a bronze grater, and beside it, an onion as a relish for the drink.' Whether Homer is right about this or not — does it belong to medicine or to the rhapsode's skill to judge it well? ION: To medicine. SOCRATES: And what about when Homer says: 'and it, like a plummet of lead, went down to the depths, which, set on the horn of a field-going ox, goes plunging down among the ravenous fishes, bearing death'? Shall we say that it belongs more to the fisherman's skill to judge these lines, whatever they say, and whether well or not, or to the rhapsode's? ION: Clearly, Socrates, to the fisherman's. SOCRATES: Now consider — suppose you were the one asking me, and you said: since, Socrates, you find in Homer matters belonging to each of these skills that it's fitting for that skill to judge, come now, find for me also the matters of the seer and of seercraft — of what sort are the things it is fitting for him to be able to judge, whether well or badly composed. See how easily and truly I would answer you. For in many places, in the Odyssey too, he speaks of this — as, for instance, what the seer of the line of Melampus says to the suitors, Theoclymenus—
SOCRATES: 'Wretched men, what evil is this you suffer? Your heads and faces and the limbs beneath are shrouded in night, wailing has burst into flame, and cheeks are wet with tears; the porch is full of ghosts, the courtyard full too, hastening down to Erebus beneath the darkness; the sun has utterly perished from the sky, and an evil mist has swept over all.' And in many places in the Iliad too — as, for instance, at the battle for the wall. He says there too: 'For a bird came to them as they strained to cross, a high-flying eagle, cutting off the army to the left, bearing in its talons a blood-red serpent, monstrous, still alive, still writhing; nor had it yet forgotten its fight, for it struck the bird that held it, on the breast beside the neck, twisting back, and the eagle, in pain, cast it from him to the ground, and dropped it in the midst of the throng; and itself, screeching, flew off on the blasts of the wind.' These things, and things like them, I will say belong to the seer to examine and judge. ION: And what you say is true, Socrates. SOCRATES: And you too, Ion, speak the truth in saying so. Come then, you do for me as I did for you — I picked out for you, from both the Odyssey and the Iliad, which lines belong to the seer, which to the doctor, and which to the fisherman; now you, in the same way, pick out for me — since you are more expert than I am in the matters of Homer — which lines belong to the rhapsode, Ion, and to the rhapsode's skill, the things that it is fitting for the rhapsode, more than for other men, to examine and judge. ION: I say, Socrates, that it is all of them. SOCRATES: You are not saying 'all of them,' Ion — or are you so forgetful? And yet it would hardly be fitting for a rhapsode to be a forgetful man.
ION: What is it I'm forgetting? SOCRATES: Don't you remember saying that the rhapsode's art is different from the charioteer's? ION: I remember. SOCRATES: And you agreed that, being different, it knows different things? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Then the rhapsode's art won't know everything, by your own account, and neither will the rhapsode. ION: Except, perhaps, things of that sort, Socrates. SOCRATES: By 'that sort' you mean, roughly, everything except what belongs to the other arts. But which things will it know, since not all of them? ION: The things fitting for a man to say, I think, and for a woman, and for a slave, and for a free man, and for a subject, and for a ruler. SOCRATES: You mean, when a ship is being battered by a storm at sea, the rhapsode will know better than the helmsman what a ruler ought to say? ION: No, the helmsman knows that. SOCRATES: And when a man is ill, will the rhapsode know better than the doctor what a ruler ought to say to him? ION: Not that either. SOCRATES: But you mean the things fitting for a slave? ION: Yes. SOCRATES: For instance, what a slave who's a herdsman ought to say to calm cattle that are turning wild — will the rhapsode know that, and not the herdsman? ION: Certainly not. SOCRATES: But what's fitting for a woman to say who works wool, about the working of wool? ION: No. SOCRATES: But he'll know what's fitting for a man to say — a general exhorting his soldiers? ION: Yes, that sort of thing the rhapsode will know. SOCRATES: What, then — is the rhapsode's art the same as generalship? ION: I myself would certainly know what's fitting for a general to say. SOCRATES: Yes, because you're probably also skilled in generalship, Ion. In fact, if you happened to be a horseman as well as a lyre-player, you'd recognize horses ridden well or badly. But if I asked you — by which art do you recognize well-ridden horses, Ion, as a horseman or as a lyre-player? — what would you answer me? ION: As a horseman, I'd say. SOCRATES: And if you could also tell good lyre-playing from bad, you'd agree that you tell it apart as a lyre-player, and not as a horseman. ION: Yes. SOCRATES: Now since you understand military matters, do you understand them as a skilled general, or as a good rhapsode? ION: I don't see that it makes any difference.
SOCRATES: What do you mean — no difference at all? Do you say the rhapsode's art and the general's are one art, or two? ION: One, I think. SOCRATES: So whoever is a good rhapsode happens also to be a good general? ION: Absolutely, Socrates. SOCRATES: And whoever happens to be a good general is also a good rhapsode? ION: No, I don't think that follows. SOCRATES: But you do think the other way round — that whoever is a good rhapsode is also a good general? ION: Certainly. SOCRATES: And you're the best rhapsode among the Greeks? ION: By far, Socrates. SOCRATES: And are you also the best general among the Greeks, Ion? ION: Rest assured, Socrates — and I learned that from Homer too. SOCRATES: Then why, in the gods' name, Ion, when you're the best of the Greeks at both things, generalship and rhapsody, do you go around performing as a rhapsode for the Greeks, but not commanding as a general? Or do you think the Greeks have great need of a rhapsode crowned with a golden wreath, but none at all of a general? ION: Well, my city, Socrates, is ruled and commanded by you Athenians and has no need of a general of its own; and your city, and the Spartans', wouldn't choose me as general — you people think yourselves quite capable. SOCRATES: My excellent Ion, don't you know Apollodorus of Cyzicus? ION: Which one is that? SOCRATES: The one the Athenians have often chosen as their general, though he's a foreigner. And Phanosthenes of Andros, and Heraclides of Clazomenae, whom this city, though they were foreigners, has raised to generalships and other offices once they showed themselves worth taking seriously — yet Ion of Ephesus, they won't choose as general and honor, if he shows himself worth taking seriously? Come now — aren't you Ephesians originally Athenians, and isn't Ephesus inferior to no city? But look here, Ion — if what you say is true, that it's by art and knowledge that you're able to praise Homer, you're doing me wrong. You promised me you knew many fine things about Homer and said you'd give a display, but you're deceiving me and are far from giving any display — you won't even say what these things are that you're supposedly clever about, though I've been begging you for so long,
SOCRATES: but you simply turn into every shape, like Proteus, twisting this way and that, until at last, slipping away from me, you turn up as a general — just so you won't have to display how clever you are at Homeric wisdom. So if you really do have expertise and are deceiving me after promising to give a display about Homer, you're doing wrong. But if you have no expertise, and it's by divine allotment, possessed by a power from Homer, that you say many fine things about the poet without knowing anything — as I said about you before — then you do no wrong at all. Choose, then, which you'd rather be thought by us — a man who does wrong, or a man touched by the divine. ION: There's a great difference, Socrates — it's far finer to be thought touched by the divine. SOCRATES: Then this finer thing is available to you from us, Ion — to be, not a man of skill, but a divinely inspired praiser of Homer.