hemselves pretend
that he was a legislator.

Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on successfully
by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was alive?

There is not.

Or is there any invention of his, applicable to the arts or to human
life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian, and other
ingenious men have conceived, which is attributed to him?

There is absolutely nothing of the kind.

But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately a guide or
teacher of any? Had he in his lifetime friends who loved to associate
with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such
as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his
wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the
order which was named after him?

Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates,
Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name
always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his
stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and
others in his own day when he was alive?

Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon,
that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind--if
he had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator--can you
imagine, I say, that he would not have had many followers, and been
honoured and loved by them? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of
Ceos, and a host of others, have only to whisper to their
contemporaries: 'You will never be able to manage either your own house
or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers of
education'--and this ingenious device of theirs has such an effect in
making them love them that their companions all but carry them about on
their shoulders. And is it conceivable that the contemporaries of
Homer, or again of Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go
about as rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind
virtuous? Would they not have been as unwilling to part with them as
with gold, and have compelled them to stay at home with them? Or, if
the master would not stay, then the disciples would have followed him
about everywhere, until they had got education enough?

Yes, Socrates, that, I think, is quite true.

Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning
with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the
like, but th