we not infer that they are under a similar delusion? they
do not see that the poets are imitators, and that their creations are
only imitations. 'Very true.' But if a person could create as well as
imitate, he would rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation
only; he would rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? 'Yes,
for then he would have more honour and advantage.'

Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer, say I to him,
I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your
poems incidentally refer, but about their main subjects--war, military
tactics, politics. If you are only twice and not thrice removed from the
truth--not an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what good
you have ever done to mankind? Is there any city which professes to have
received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from Charondas, Sparta
from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? Or was any war ever carried on by your
counsels? or is any invention attributed to you, as there is to Thales
and Anacharsis? Or is there any Homeric way of life, such as the
Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is called after
you? 'No, indeed; and Creophylus (Flesh-child) was even more unfortunate
in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as tradition says, Homer in
his lifetime was allowed by him and his other friends to starve.' Yes,
but could this ever have happened if Homer had really been the educator
of Hellas? Would he not have had many devoted followers? If Protagoras
and Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries that no one can manage
house or State without them, is it likely that Homer and Hesiod would
have been allowed to go about as beggars--I mean if they had really been
able to do the world any good?--would not men have compelled them
to stay where they were, or have followed them about in order to get
education? But they did not; and therefore we may infer that Homer and
all the poets are only imitators, who do but imitate the appearances of
things. For as a painter by a knowledge of figure and colour can paint a
cobbler without any practice in cobbling, so the poet can delineate
any art in the colours of language, and give harmony and rhythm to the
cobbler and also to the general; and you know how mere narration, when
deprived of the ornaments of metre, is like a face which has lost the
beauty of youth and never had any other. Once more, the imitator has no
knowledge of re