The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ion, by Plato

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Title: Ion

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #1635]
Release Date: February, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

ION

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings
which bear the name of Plato, and is not authenticated by any early
external testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the
only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is
simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast
between the irony of Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike
enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly
have been suggested by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which
the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the
exact words of Homer, but very idiotic themselves.' (Compare Aristotle,
Met.)

Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in
Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit
at the festival of the Panathenaea. Socrates admires and envies the
rhapsode's art; for he is always well dressed and in good company--in
the company of good poets and of Homer, who is the prince of them. In
the course of conversation the admission is elicited from Ion that his
skill is restricted to Homer, and that he knows nothing of inferior
poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus;--he brightens up and is wide
awake when Homer is being recited, but is apt to go to sleep at the
recitations of any other poet. 'And yet, surely, he who knows the
superior ought to know the inferior also;--he who can judge of the good
speaker is able to judge of the bad. And poetry is a whole; and he
who judges of poetry by rules of art ought to be able to judge of
all poetry.' This is confirmed by the analogy of sculpture, painting,
flute-playing, and the other arts. The argument is at last brought home
to the mind of Ion, who asks how this contradiction is to be solve