Accessible translation and commentary for the last few lines of Plato’s Ion. Jump to commentary.

Translation

ΣΩ. Ὦ βέλτιστε Ἴων, Ἀπολλόδωρον οὐ γιγνώσκεις τὸν Κυζικηνόν; SO: My excellent Ion, don’t you know about Apollodorus of Cyzicus?
ΙΩΝ. Ποῖον τοῦτον; ION: What’s his deal?
ΣΩ. Ὃν Ἀθηναῖοι πολλάκις ἑαυτῶν στρατηγὸν ᾕρηνται ξένον ὄντα· καὶ Φανοσθένη τὸν Ἄνδριον καὶ Ἡρακλείδην τὸν Κλαζοµένιον, οὓς ἥδε ἡ πόλις ξένους ὄντας, ἐνδειξαµένους ὅτι ἄξιοι λόγου εἰσί, καὶ εἰς στρατηγίας καὶ εἰς τὰς ἄλλας ἀρχὰς ἄγει· Ἴωνα δ’ ἄρα τὸν Ἐφέσιον οὐχ αἱρήσεται στρατηγὸν καὶ τιµήσει, ἐὰν δοκῇ ἄξιος λόγου εἶναι; τί δέ; οὐκ Ἀθηναῖοι µέν ἐστε οἱ Ἐφέσιοι τὸ ἀρχαῖον, καὶ ἡ Ἔφεσος οὐδεµιᾶς ἐλάττων πόλεως; ἀλλὰ γὰρ σύ, ὦ Ἴων, εἰ µὲν ἀληθῆ λέγεις ὡς τέχνῃ καὶ ἐπιστήµῃ οἷός τε εἶ Ὅµηρον ἐπαινεῖν, ἀδικεῖς, ὅστις ἐµοὶ ὑποσχόµενος ὡς πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ περὶ Ὁµήρου ἐπίστασαι καὶ φάσκων ἐπιδείξειν, ἐξαπατᾷς µε καὶ πολλοῦ δεῖς ἐπιδεῖξαι, ὅς γε οὐδὲ ἅττα ἐστὶ ταῦτα περὶ ὧν δεινὸς εἶ ἐθέλεις εἰπεῖν, πάλαι ἐµοῦ λιπαροῦντος, ἀλλὰ ἀτεχνῶς ὥσπερ ὁ Πρωτεὺς παντοδαπὸς γίγνῃ στρεφόµενος ἄνω καὶ κάτω, ἕως τελευτῶν διαφυγών µε στρατηγὸς ἀνεφάνης, ἵνα µὴ ἐπιδείξῃς ὡς δεινὸς εἶ τὴν περὶ Ὁµήρου σοφίαν. εἰ µὲν οὖν τεχνικὸς ὤν, ὅπερ νυνδὴ ἔλεγον, περὶ Ὁµήρου ὑποσχόµενος ἐπιδείξειν ἐξαπατᾷς µε, ἄδικος εἶ· εἰ δὲ µὴ τεχνικὸς εἶ, ἀλλὰ θείᾳ µοίρᾳ κατεχόµενος ἐξ Ὁµήρου µηδὲν εἰδὼς πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ λέγεις περὶ τοῦ ποιητοῦ, ὥσπερ ἐγὼ εἶπον περὶ σοῦ, οὐδὲν ἀδικεῖς. ἑλοῦ οὖν πότερα βούλει νοµίζεσθαι ὑπὸ ἡµῶν ἄδικος ἀνὴρ εἶναι ἢ θεῖος. SO: He’s a man whom the Athenians have often elected general, despite his being a foreigner. And there’re also Phanosthenes of Andros and Heracleides of Clazomenae, whom this city gives generalships and other high offices, despite their being foreigners, because they have proved themselves to be worthy of the title. Will Athens not also select Ion of Ephesus general and honor him, if he shows himself worthy? Why, aren’t you Ephesians originally Athenians, and Ephesus inferior to no city? But in fact, Ion, if what you say it true—that by skillful art and knowledge you are able to praise Homer—you do me wrong. You have promised me that you know many and beautiful things about Homer, and you say that you’ll show them to me. But you deceive me, and far from showing me, clever-you aren’t even willing to tell me what these things are, despite my many entreaties. No, simply put, you are like Proteus, taking on all sorts of shapes, twisting up and down, until finally you escape me in the semblance of a general, just so clever you don’t have to show me your cleverness about Homer. If you really are a skilled artist, as I was saying just now, promising to show me your Homeric craft—you deceive me, you’re in the wrong. But if you are no artist, if instead it is by divine providence that you, possessed by Homer and knowing nothing, speak many and beautiful things about the Poet, just as I said, then you do no wrong. So choose which of the two you’d prefer to be called, a ‘dishonest’ man or a ‘divine’ one, and we’ll agree.
ΙΩΝ. Πολὺ διαφέρει, ὦ Σώκρατες· πολὺ γὰρ κάλλιον τὸ θεῖον νοµίζεσθαι. ION: They’re pretty different, Socrates; for it’s much more virtuous to be called ‘divine’.
ΣΩ. Τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ κάλλιον ὑπάρχει σοι παρ’ ἡµῖν, ὦ Ἴων, θεῖον εἶναι καὶ µὴ τεχνικὸν περὶ Ὁµήρου ἐπαινέτην. SO: Then as far as we’re concerned, this more-virtuous designation will be yours, Ion: being a divine and non-artistic extoller of Homer.

 

Commentary

Put simply, Homer was a big deal in antiquity. The stories of the Iliad and Odyssey would be performed at religious festivals. Lines from Homer’s work would receive citation in works of ethics, metaphysics, and literary theory; even if the epics were not at the basis for their work, philosophers would mention Homer out of intellectual necessity. In the Hellenistic and Roman eras, Homer was the foundational schoolroom text for Greek literacy and grammatical instruction.

Plato was no exception. Significant portions of his Republic deal with the educative and political ramifications of a culture engaged in widespread Homer-reading, Homer-revering. (One later commentator thought that Plato was obsessed with Homer out of sublime artistic respect, rather than philosophical resentment.) In the Ion, Plato’s target of concern is shifted, from the Poet to his latter-day disciples. He does not tackle the inherent value of the epic works—as mentioned, that comes in later treatises—but he hopes to bring the rhapsode down a few pegs. This man is Ion, who has spent his entire professional life reading, reciting, and talking about Homer.

The dialogue begins with Ion’s return to Athens, having just won a rhapsodic competition in nearby Epidaurus. It ends with Ion’s admission that he would rather be called a divine Homeric rhapsode than an artistic one. This would seem a kind of promotion: Ion rests on his hard-won laurels and upgrades his defining adjective from ‘skilled’ (τεχνικὸς) to ‘godly’ (θεῖος). For Plato, though, the shift is a crucial distinction in Socrates’ quest to disprove the ‘art’ of Homeric performance.

The rhapsode had an odd function in classical Greece. He memorized and could recite from the Odyssey and Iliad at will, as at local cultural events and broader Greek religious festivals, but he could also expound upon the meanings and significances of more-confusing Homeric passages. In this way, he might be thought of (in a modern sense) to someone between a biblical preacher and classical Shakespeare actor, since Homer occupied in the Greek sensibility something between ‘source of all truth’ and ‘source of all good writing’. Every audience member agrees that the Homeric epics are important, but some lines are quite confusing. Why, for instance, does Homer devote four or five lines to discussing the intricacies of medicine (Il. 11.639) or chariot racing (Il. 23.335)? The rhapsode claims he can talk the verbatim talk and also walk the interpretive walk, offering homilies or explications of even those sections that have more to do with factual content than the siege of Troy or journeys of Odysseus.

Socrates raises these two examples in the Ion (537a, 538d), asking (sarcastically) whether Ion the Homeritician really is more qualified to talk about medicine and chariot-racing than, say, a doctor or a charioteer. Ion must agree that, where specific content-knowledge is concerned, the modern practitioner is probably better qualified to say whether Homer speaks truth or falsehood—or, put more politely, whether the Homeric truth is literal or metaphorical. These two examples must have been common, at least in the Socratic tradition if not in classical philosophy writ large, since Xenophon includes both in his Symposium (4.6–8), with similar purpose.

Immediately preceding our passage, Socrates pushes Ion even further. The philosopher himself recites passages of relevance to the seer, the doctor, and the fisherman, asking: What passages are of relevance to the rhapsode? Indeed, if the Homeric rhapsode is not the most qualified to expound upon these sections, which sections is he uniquely qualified to discuss? Ion first says ‘all passages’, then the rather interesting claim that the rhapsode can draw out from Homer speech befitting men and woman, slave and freeman, subject and ruler. Ion’s claim, while insufficiently argued, implies that Homer, as fount of cultural knowledge and source of social norms, is quite important for understanding the hierarchical relationships of Greek society. (Most scholars of Archaic Greece would agree!) Socrates does little to engage with this, though, saying as before that the spinning-woman would know what befits a woman best, the cowherd the slave, and so on. Ion’s argumentative fate is sealed when he claims that the rhapsode still knows what’s best for the man—that is, the general—that is, Ion himself. This is disappointing, since Plato seemed to be making a nuanced point on Ion’s behalf before tossing it away with a wave of the hand.

Instead, we move on, to the equivalence of good rhapsode with good general, whereby Ion is the best rhapsode in Greece. Our passage begins amidst Socrates’ move, nearly ad hominem, questioning why Ion the Great Rhapsode-General has not earned major military victories on behalf of Athens, their home city. Ion notes that he’s Ion the Ephesian first and foremost, and that he cannot as a foreigner fight on behalf of Athens. Socrates lists three men (Apollodorus of Cyzicus, Phanosthenes of Andros, and Heracleides of Clazomenae) whose records would seem to disagree. He then launches into a lengthy and scathing rebuke of Ion, accusing him of unjust deceit and Protean elusion where all he really wanted, Socrates asserts, was just to hear Ion perform some Homer. (No matter that Socrates started reciting Homer instead of Ion, as the dialogue went along.) This must be the case if Ion can only recite the Iliad and Odyssey and offer color commentary at will, as if by his own art or skill (techne).

Here is where Socrates offers him a way out: What if it is not through techne that Ion is such a successful rhapsode, but instead through divine inspiration? This might sound ridiculous—literal deus ex machina—but it makes sense in the context of epic poetry. Homer began both his poems with an invocation of the Muse; so did Hesiod, Pindar, and the other lofty poets of the Archaic and Classical Eras. While there are intriguing nuances to explore between them, as far as the agency they give the Muse versus their own ingenuity, the thread is common, and Socrates uses it to draw (halfway through the Ion) an image of poetic inspiration. The Muse is the magnetic rock, enlivening a series of linked iron chains: the poet, the rhapsode, the audience. Socrates’ olive branch to Ion, while sounding complimentary, actually divests him of agency, and of having any sense of skill. If Ion is just a vessel, indirectly, for a message originally of the Muse, he himself isn’t all that special; he’s even further than Homer from the original divine truth; and he probably doesn’t deserve laurels at Greek festivals.

In this manner, Plato manages to revere the gods while also critiquing an old and venerated (if slightly outdated) institution of Greek society. Socrates’ rhetoric is aided by Ion acting the part of arrogant, entitled strawman. The only objections are broad—Plato has no real respect for poetry per se, except as trickle-down of the Muse’s inspiration—or incidental, as when Ion’s best (accidental) argument about Homer’s sociological merit goes insufficiently addressed.

 

Originally composed for Dr. Patrick Glauthier'’s fall 2016 course, ‘Plato on Poetry.’