erformed this vow; or that he dragged Hector round
the tomb of Patroclus, and slaughtered the captives at the pyre; of all
this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can allow
our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron's pupil, the son of a
goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in descent
from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time the slave
of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not untainted by
avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and men.

You are quite right, he replied.

And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale
of Theseus son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous son of Zeus, going forth as
they did to perpetrate a horrid rape; or of any other hero or son of
a god daring to do such impious and dreadful things as they falsely
ascribe to them in our day: and let us further compel the poets to
declare either that these acts were not done by them, or that they
were not the sons of gods;--both in the same breath they shall not be
permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our youth
that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better
than men--sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor
true, for we have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods.

Assuredly not.

And further they are likely to have a bad effect on those who hear them;
for everybody will begin to excuse his own vices when he is convinced
that similar wickednesses are always being perpetrated by--

'The kindred of the gods, the relatives of Zeus, whose ancestral altar,
the altar of Zeus, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,'

and who have

'the blood of deities yet flowing in their veins.'

And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they engender laxity
of morals among the young.

By all means, he replied.

But now that we are determining what classes of subjects are or are not
to be spoken of, let us see whether any have been omitted by us. The
manner in which gods and demigods and heroes and the world below should
be treated has been already laid down.

Very true.

And what shall we say about men? That is clearly the remaining portion
of our subject.

Clearly so.

But we are not in a condition to answer this question at present, my
friend.

Why not?

Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that about men poets
and story-tellers are guilty of mak