y. Let them fashion the mind
with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their
hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.

Of what tales are you speaking? he said.

You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said; for they are
necessarily of the same type, and there is the same spirit in both of
them.

Very likely, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would term
the greater.

Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of
the poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of mankind.

But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with
them?

A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and,
what is more, a bad lie.

But when is this fault committed?

Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and
heroes,--as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a
likeness to the original.

Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blamable; but what
are the stories which you mean?

First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies, in high
places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie
too,--I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus
retaliated on him. The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in
turn his son inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought
certainly not to be lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if
possible, they had better be buried in silence. But if there is an
absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a
mystery, and they should sacrifice not a common [Eleusinian] pig, but
some huge and unprocurable victim; and then the number of the hearers
will be very few indeed.

Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.

Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the
young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he
is far from doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises
his father when does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be
following the example of the first and greatest among the gods.

I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are
quite unfit to be repeated.

Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of
quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any
word be said to them of the wars in heaven,