No Response<br><br>-
The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave
irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about
ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting
to distinguish the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering
the text from design; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer
inaccurately, after the manner of the early logographers turning the
Iliad into prose, and delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from
his words, or to make ludicrous applications of them. He does not, like
Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but
uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on
a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the
Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them
are sound, although the premises are fictitious. These fanciful appeals
to Homer add a charm to Plato's style, and at the same time they have
the effect of a satire on the follies of Homeric interpretation. To us
(and probably to himself), although they take the form of arguments,
they are really figures of speech. They may be compared with modern
citations from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power even
when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of. The
real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Memorabilia of
Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations. Great in all ages and
countries, in religion as well as in law and literature, has been the
art of interpretation.