B. A. (Hons.

) English – Semester I Core Course

Paper II : European Classical Literature Study Material

Unit-5 : Background Readings

(a) Plato (b) Aristotle
(c) Sappho (d) Horace

Edited by : Nalini Prabhakar

Department of English

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

University of Delhi
Paper-II: European Classical Literature

Unit-5 : Background Readings

(a) Plato (b) Aristotle

(c) Sappho (d) Horace

Edited by:
Nalini Prabhakar
School of Open Learning
University of Delhi
Delhi-110007

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 Paper-II: European Classical Literature

Unit-5 : Background Readings

Contents
S. No. Title Prepared by Pg. No.
(a) Plato: The Republic V.P. Sharma 01

(b) Aristotle: Poetics Shriya Pandey 29

(c) Sappho 40

i. On The Throne of Many Hues, Shruti Sareen 42

Immortal Aphrodite
ii. Some Say an Army of Horsemen Shruti Sareen 43

(d) Horace: 'Ars Poetica' Sambuddha Jash 48

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
 Unit 5 (a)
Plato: The Republic
V.P. Sharma
Your syllabus requires you to study Chapter X of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s The
Republic. But any study of Plato and his philosophy must begin with his teacher Socrates
(470-399 B.C.) who influenced him profoundly in his thoughts. Plato pays tribute to his
teacher by making him the central character of The Republic. Let us therefore begin with
Socrates.
Part I
Socrates
We know nothing for certain about Socrates. He taught entirely by word of mouth and left
nowritings of his own. Because he wrote nothing all information about him depends on the
historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato. Plato put his ideas into the month of Socrates
in his early and middle dialogues called Socratic Dialogues. Throughout these dialogues
Socrates is the main speaker and his views are triumphant. Socrates does not figure in the
later dialogues. It is of course difficult to know just how much and in what way Plato
developed the Socratic philosophy. Socrates is said to have had a beautiful soul in an ugly
body and a quarrelsome wife called Xanthippe. He fell out of favour with the ruling party of
Athens, his native city, because he kept company with the enemies of the Government. He
was suspected of impiety for he claimed to be guided by a divine sign (a daimonion or
daemon) or, inner voice. In 399 BC, when he was more than 70 years of age, Socrates was
accused of “corrupting the youth, and believing not in the gods of the city, but in gods of his
own.” He was tried by a massive jury, found guilty by a vote of 281 to 220, and made to put
himself to death by drinking poison hemlock. The story of his trail, imprisonment, and
execution is told by his disciple Plato in three short dialogues, most memorably in the
Apology and the Phaedo.
Socratic Method and Socratic Irony
“One thing only I know and that is that 1 know nothing” is the starting point of Socratic
Philosophy. Socrates destroyed the false conceit of knowledge blinding the Athenians to their
ignorance. He conversed with all that would listen. He would ask the same question, What is
Justice? or Love, or Virtue. He discovered nothing more in what many so-called wise persons
told him than a mass of confused opinions. Such opinions were not knowledge and holders of
such opinions did not possess wisdom. As soon as a definition was given, he would proceed
to demonstrate, by a series of adroitly put questions, how utterly worthless it was. Not that he
claimed to understand the matter himself. He confessed to complete ignorance. Only he
realized and admitted his ignorance while others didn’t. This is Socratic irony—the
profession of ignorance on the part of Socrates, who is in fact quite wise. His “victims” called
him “sly” pretending that he knows less than they do when he knows more. The Greek for
slyness is “Irony.” His object was to prick bubbles. His urbane pretence of ignorance, his
eagerness to learn, his readiness to entertain different points of view and his tireless cross-
examination of his “victims’–all this proved that the so-called knowledge is merely a mass of
ill-grounded–opinions leading under logical scrutiny to absurd results. Socrates believed that
children are born with knowledge already in their souls, but they cannot recall this knowledge
1
without some help. This is the theory of knowledge as recollection (Greek anamnesis). The
teacher’s role is akin to that of a midwife. Socrates was the son of an Athenian stone-cutter
and of a mid-wife. In a sense, he practised his mother’s trade. Plato makes him describe
himself as one who assists (like a mid-wife) at the birth of ideas. This metaphor, logically
developed by Plato, becomes a whole theory of education.
Plato (427-347 BC)
Plato was born in Athens and lived there for most of his eighty years. He was called Plato, it
is said, because of his broad shoulders. He came from a distinguished aristocratic family. On
his mother’s side his pedigree went back to the famous Athenian lawgiver Solon, and on his
father’s side to Athens” last king Codrus. His mother was the sister of Charmides and the
niece of Critias. Opposition to democracy was almost in his blood, and the martyrdom of
Socrates only increased his bias. He fell deeply under the spell of Socrates’ magnetic and
searching thought, and was shocked when, at the age of about 27 he saw his master
condemned to death on the charge of corrupting young men and not believing in the city’s
gods. After the disaster, most of the friends of Socrates left Athens for a time, and Plato now
had a period of travel. He visited the Greek cities of Cicily and southern Italy, and made
political and scholarly friends there. By about 385 he was back in Athens. He founded near
the grove sacred to a legendary hero called Academus, what has come to be called the
“Academy.” He gathered about him a number of pupils who united themselves in a
“museum”, or friendly society dedicated to the Muses. Plato appears to have devoted himself
to his “Academy” for most of the remaining forty years of his long life.
The Dialogues
All but one of Plato’s thirty-six works are dialogues. Philosophy is essentially a kind of
reasoning. An inquiry that proceeds like a monologue is one-sided. Statements are submitted
to criticism by others and tested by what they suggest. This involves dialogue. The typical
Platonic dialogue draws out the meanings of a statement in order to test its consistency with
itself and with other statements.
Plato’s dialogues constitute a great philosophical work. They are also masterpieces of
literature. His thought has had and still has untold influence. Written in a prose unsurpassed
for purity and elegance, his dialogues have become synonymous with philosophy. Plato’s
central contribution to philosophy is the theory of Forms. Closely bound up with this theory
are two others, namely that the soul is immortal and that all knowledge is reminiscence or
recollection (The soul needs in this life only to be reminded of what it has forgotten).
The Republic
The Republic1 is Plato’s masterpiece. Socrates discusses with his friends the nature of Justice
(Another title of the dialogue is Justice.), and the conversation leads to an outline of the ideal
or perfect society, the republic after which the book is named.

1
The word ‘republic’ in Plato is a translation of the Greek word politeia. It simply means the political
organization of a state, be it a monarchy or a democracy.

2
While only Book X of The Republic has been prescribed for detailed study you would do
well to acquaint yourself with the general argument of The Republic as a whole. Plato’s
Theory of Art (Book X) cannot, in fact, be discussed independently of the rest of The
Republic, The Republic is primarily a book of philosophy. In studying it, therefore, we have
to pay attention above all to the reasoning, the order and connection of thought. A
philosopher thinks facts out to their consequences, and the truth he holds is reasoned truth.
The argument of the Republic falls into the following main divisions:
1. Introduction: The chief speaker is Socrates who repeats the conversation for an
unnamed group the day after it occurs. Those taking part besides himself, he says,
were his friend Cephalus, Cephalus’ son Polemarches, Plato’s brothers Glaucon and
Adeimantus and a Sophist called Thrasymachus (Sophists=wandering teachers who
came to Athens from foreign cities.). “The conversation begins with a discussion of
old age (Cephalus is a very old man), but this is soon abandoned in favour of an
attempt to define Justice. The question raised and discussed is: What does morality
mean in a man’s innermost life?
2. Plato describes in outline what, as he thinks, would be the best form of human society.
Beginning with the external organization of life in the state Plato discovers that in
every part of it, a principle upon which the welfare of the community depends has its
roots in the constitution of human nature. Whatever is good or evil in the external
order of society depends upon the inner nature of the soul. Myths and the false beliefs
taught in literature are considered.
3. Further discussion of some points in the institutions of the ideal society. The question
discussed is by what means this ideal could be realized. The answer is that human life
would be as perfect as it is capable of being, if it were governed throughout by
knowledge of the ideal Forms. The cause of all present evils is that men are blinded
by opinions which arise from the transient material phenomena perceived by the
senses. At this point Socrates says that he will describe by an image what is the actual
condition of mankind in regard to education and the want of it. The description is
given in the passage known as the “Allegory of the Cave”. (XXV/VII514A-521B)
We need only notice a few points in the allegory. The allegory pictures human beings living
in an underground cave which has a mouth open towards the light. Here they have been from
their childhood and have their legs and necks chained. These prisoners are sitting with their
backs to the light, the chains prevent them from turning round their heads. Above and behind
them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised
way, and a low wall built along the way, like the screen which puppet players have in front of
them. They can only see shadows of men and objects passing along the wall, and shadows of
one another which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. These prisoners take the
procession of shadows, projected by an inferior source of light, for realities.
Plato’s portrait of the dwellers in the cave calls to mind Aeschylus’ picture of the primitive
men in his Prometheus Bound:

3
 How first beholding, they behold in vain,
And hearing heard not, but like shapes in dreams
Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time.
Nor knew to build a house toward the Sun
With walls of brick, nor any woodwork knew;
But lived like silly ants beneath the ground
In hollow caves unsunned.2
With this difference. that Plato is rather portraying the condition of
unenlightened humanity.
GLAUCON : It is a strange picture he said, and a strange sort of prisoners.
SOCRATES : Like ourselves, I replied .....
We are told that most people abide in this condition all their lives. And this is not the state of
a few miserable outcasts, it is our own state. In other words, the view of men about
themselves and the world around them is a view distorted by falsifying media, by their own
passions, and prejudices of other people conveyed to them by pictures and sound. These
prisoners not only live permanently in this state of make-believe, but it is one from which
they do not desire to escape. The cave world is a copy of the surface world.
Getting up to the light is a painful process. If here and there a prisoner from the cave
does get up to the light, and then, returns to tell the other prisoners what he has seen, they
laugh at him and perhaps kill him. Instead of cooperating with the leading minds that arise in
its midst, society is either indifferent or actively hostile to them. A Socrates, a Christ, a
Gandhi is condemned to die. Therefore, Plato proposes a government by philosophers. This is
an allegory of the position of man on earth and his deliverance by education. Plato’s theory of
education springs directly out of the allegory of the cave. Education is not like putting sight
into blind eyes, it is like turning the eye to the light. Indeed, it could only be done by turning
the whole body round.
Education means not merely illuminating the intellect, but turning the whole soul another
way. The allegory describes a liberator who turns ‘he prisoners round and tries to convince
them that the actual images they see in the light of the Sun are nearer to reality than the
shadows they watched in the cave. Socrates is here saying that most of us spend most of our
lives in seeing only reflections or hearing only echoes without ever seeing or hearing the
originals. The cave stands for the visible world in which we live, the fire in the cave
representing the sun. Just as the cave represents the sensible world, so the sensible world
outside the cave represents the ideal world of Forms.
Plato, so far as the Republic is concerned, does not trust any form of knowledge but the
intellectual. Poets and painters are altogether ignorant of conceptual knowledge. A work of

2
'Cornford quotes Empedocles' line 'We have come under this cavern's roof. The lines from Aeshylus seem to
be closer to Plato's allegory.

4
art has no hold of reality in the way of knowledge. It represents things as they appear not as
they are or ought to be. Thus begins what Plato calls "an ancient feud between philosophy
and poetry". Plato resolves, though reluctantly, that poetry must be banished from the ideal
state. The Gist of Plato’s attack on art is straightforward enough. Since every particular object
in the sensible world is only an image of its appropriate Form, every representation of such a
particular must be, at least twice removed from reality. Any particular bed can only be an
imperfect copy of the Form of Bed, and any painting of that particular bed can only be a copy
of a copy. This also holds for poetry. Poetry, like painting, is only a reproduction of a
reproduction (instead of performing heroic deeds, the poet writes about them). What poetry
offers is not ‘knowledge’ but ‘opinion’. That which is grasped by poet writes about them).
What poetry offers is not ‘knowledge’ but ‘opinion’. That which is grasped by thought with a
dialectical account is the thing that is always real, whereas that which is the object of opinion
and belief with unreasoning sensation is the thing that changes and passes away, and never
has real being.
4. The picture of what human life might be at its best is followed by a picture of human
evil, tracing the fall of human society and human nature to the lowest depths they can
reach.
5. The subject of art is treated over again, and especially of poetry. The last part of the
Republic considers the destinies of the human soul, by following the soul into, the life
after death.
[The above summary of the argument of the Republic has been drawn mainly from R.L.
Nettleship. Lectures on the Republic of Plato, Volume II of Nettleship’s Philosophical
Lectures and Remains, Macmillan, 1887’. This is a classical commentary on the Republic. Is
available in Paper back edition. There are numerous reprints. Quotations from the Republic
are in F.M. Cornford’s translation.]
Later, in part 2, we will turn specifically to Plato’s views on Art and Literature. But it must
be very forcefully stressed that Plato’s views, on art and education derive from his theory of
the Forms. This theory of forms indeed, we want to make it clear, provides all the clues to
Plato’s views of art and education.
Poetry, like painting, is third from reality. The artist is a copyist for Plato. He is inferior
to the workman or producer because he is an imitator and creates a world of make-believe.
Imitation (Greek mimesis), it must be understood, is not set by Plato against the creative
imagination: he calls a beautiful rhythm “an imitation” of a manly, self-controlled character.
Imitation enters into the very fabric of character. We are forever imitating the forms. We
imitate, not only if we play a part on the stage, but when we sit as spectators, when we read
Homer and put ourselves into the place of his heroes. We imitate unconsciously the line and
colour of the walls around us, the trees by the wayside, the animals we pet, the very dress we
wear. The depth of Plato’s theory of imitation and his recognition of the power of Art deserve
attention. In any case he holds that there is no other road to truth but dialectical reason.

5
Plato’s Theory of Forms
We have found the following passage from the Symposium so illuminating that we offer it as
an introduction to Plato’s theory of Forms. We hope that it will induce in you an awareness of
what the theory of Forms may be about.
We would ask you to read this passage lovingly and closely. (A skimpy reading will not do).
We want you to come to your own understanding of the passage. Later in the course of this
discussion we will try to bring out the meaning of the passage.
Before attending to the passage you should be clear about the meaning of these words:
Symposium: Greek word for ‘Banquet’ or more accurately, a drinking-part. The dialogue
describes a drinking-party held at the home of the tragic poet Agathon. It reports the speeches
in praise of love that were, made by Socrates and others.
Philosophy: Comes from two Greek words: PHILEIN = to love+SOPHIA= wisdom.
Philosophy means love of wisdom. So speaks Socrates in Phaedrus of the teachers of
mankind: ‘Wise I may not call them; for that is a great name which belongs to God alone;
lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest and befitting title’.
Dialectic: The word means discourse or discussion. It is primarily the art of debate by
question and answer. As conceived by Plato. It is the art of increasing knowledge by
questions and answers, and in its final stages the art of grasping the real nature of things.
Plato calls dialectic "the coping-stone of the whole structure of knowledge.’’ It is the highest,
because the clearest and hence the ultimate, sort of knowledge.
Here is the passage:
He who approaches the matter aright must begin to feel, while he is young. An attraction
towards beautiful bodies, and he must first, if he who guides him guide him rightly, love one
such body and beget therein beautiful thoughts. Next he should realise that the beauty in one
body is brother to the beauty in another, and that if he should pursue what is beautiful in
form, it would be the height of folly not to consider the beauty in all bodies one and the same;
and when he has taken this truth in, he should emerge as a lover of all beautiful bodies and
restrain his excessive love for one only, regarding it as trivial and contemptible. After that he
should regard beauty in souls as more valuable than bodily beauty, so that one with an
upright soul, even though with little beauty, would satisfy him as the object of his love and
care, and he would seek to give birth to such thoughts as would improve the young. Thus he
will be compelled to gaze at the beauty that there is in customs and laws, and to see the
kinship of all this beauty and so he will have to regard bodily beauty as a trivial thing. And
after customs, he should lead his pupil on to the sciences, so that he may behold their beauty
in turn, and, looking at the great breadth of beauty now attained, may no longer be involved
like a servant, in his affection for the beauty of one person or institution, to a single beautiful
thing, and so become petty and narrow-minded; rather he would turn to the great ocean of
beauty, and contemplating the many and noble thoughts therein, would give birth to his
notions in ungrudging philosophy; until there strengthened and enlarged, he glimpses a single
such science, the science of universal beauty.

6
 ..... He who has been trained thus far in the affairs of love, contemplating beautiful things
in their right order, is now approaching the end of the study of love. He will suddenly
glimpse a beauty that is wonderful in its nature-that very thing Socrates, for the sake of
which, he undertook all his earlier toil. First, it is eternal, it is neither generated nor
destroyed, it neither grows nor wastes away. Next it is not beautiful in one aspect and in
another ugly, nor beautiful at one time and not at another, nor beautiful in one relation and
ugly in another, nor beautiful to some and ugly to others. Nor again can this beauty be
pictured, like a face or hands or any other bodily part, or like a doctrine or a science. It never
subsists in anything else–in a living thing, for instance, or in truth or heaven or anywhere
else; it is in and by itself, eternally uniform. All other beautiful things partake of it in such a
manner that, while all else is generated and destroyed, it alone never grows greater or less or
is in any way affected.
When anyone, ascending from these first steps by a right course of love, begins to
glimpse that absolute beauty, he can almost touch the consummation. For this is the right
approach to the affairs of love, or the right way to be guided by another; to begin from
particular objects of beauty and, for the sake of that absolute beauty, to climb on and on, as if
on the rungs of a ladder, from one to two, from two to all beautiful bodies; from beautiful
bodies to beautiful customs; from customs to beautiful branches of knowledge: so that from
beautiful branches of knowledge, one may end up at the branch of knowledge: of nothing
other than this absolute beauty, and may understand in the end what absolute beauty is. Such
is the life, my dear Socrates, said the stranger from Mantinea, which above all others a man
should live, in contemplation of beauty itself. If you ever behold beauty itself, you will not
class it with money, clothes, beautiful persons, even though now, at the sight of them, you are
infatuated and ready, like many another, so long as you can see your beloved and be forever
with him, neither to eat nor to drink but only to gaze at him and be with him. What then, she
said. Do we think about anyone to whom is granted the sight of beauty itself, absolute, pure
and uncontaminated; not immersed in human flesh or colour or other such mortal trivialities,
but the divine and uniform beauty itself? Do you think a man’s life would be paltry, she said,
while he gazes thither and contemplates and associates with that for which we should strive?
Do you not rather imagine that there alone will it befall him, while he sees beauty as it should
be seen, to give birth, not to images of goodness, since he is not in contact with an image but
with reality, but to true goodness? And when he has given birth to true goodness and reared
it, then it is his lot to become dear to the gods and, if such is ever granted to any man, to
become himself immortal.
Like nearly all the dialogues of Plato the Symposium has a dramatic setting. Plato had the
conscience of a true dramatist and never put himself by name into his dialogues. But he was
of the view that philosophy can only be found in the discussions of living men. For the
argument to be pursued effectively the dramatic setting was essential.
The Symposium is among Plato’s masterpieces. Here we have a discussion of love from
almost all points of view. Six speeches are made in praise of love. No aspect of love is
neglected. The climax is reached in the speech of Socrates which makes love the everlasting
possession of absolute Beauty. Platonic love seeks the absolute beauty of the perfect and

7
eternal Forms. It is a passion, a mystic longing for the vision of Beauty. Mind you. it has
nothing to do with artistic beauty.
We hope that you will have found the passage moving. Indeed it is one of the peaks in
the history of prose. Anybody who reads it is bound to feel that Plato was not a mere
philosopher, but was a visionary and a mystic who had experiences which are denied to the
ordinary run of men. And he was a great literary artist, a poet, and a mythmaker. Truly did
Shelley say that Plato spoke the language of the gods.
To help you in understanding the passage from the Symposium, let us analyse its
argument. For the moment we will ignore the pulsating vitality, the beauty, and colour of its
eloquence, and attend to its meaning.
The core of the Symposium is Love of the Soul (Eros). The ultimate aim of Socratic love
is to perceive absolute Beauty itself. To know absolute Beauty is the last step in the upward
movement of thought. In the Republic absolute Beauty reappears in the guise of the Idea of
the Good. In Phaedo an early dialogue, this ultimate reality is called "something
satisfactory". So, the development of Plato’s conception of the ultimate reality is from a
"something satisfactory" to absolute Beauty–and finally, to the Idea of the Good.
This gospel of Love is put into the mouth of an otherwise unknown and most probably
imaginary priestess called Diotima. Love for Plato is closely akin to philosophy. A
philosopher is a lover of wisdom. The speech of Diotima serves as a forceful introduction to
the greater part of the argument of The Republic. Here is Socrates speaking to Glaucon in the
Republic:
Hence Glaucon... the decisive importance of education in poetry and music:
rhythm and harmony sink deep into the recesses of the soul and to the
strongest hold there, bringing that grace of body and mind which is only to be
found in one who is brought up in the right way. Moreover, a proper training
in this kind makes a man quick to perceive any defect or ugliness in art or in
nature. Such deformity will rightly disgust him. Approving all that is lovely,
he will welcome it home with joy into his soul and, nourished by it, grow into
a man of noble spirit. All that is ugly and disgraceful he will rightly condemn
and abhor while he is still too young to understand the reason., and when
reason comes he will greet her (the beauty of Reason) as a friend with whom
his education has made him long familiar. III 401)
Here is the essence of Plato’s beliefs on education. The passage describes first how the
Guardians, by being brought up in a beautiful environment, shall gradually learn the kinship
of all physical beauty and shall begin to love beauty. Next they will come to value beauty of
soul higher than mere physical beauty. And finally they will be ready to possess the Beauty
of Reason for ever.
Platonic Forms
The central place is occupied by the theory of Forms in Plato’s system. The Forms constitute
a world which exists of itself, is eternal and unchanging, and can be grasped by thought. In
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this pure and independent existence the forms have their abode–here the soul in its former
existence has perceived them. All learning and knowledge consists in the recollection by the
soul of the forms when it perceives the things of sense. The role of the teacher is like that of a
mid-wife who assists at the birth of ideas. The earthly things perceived by the senses are mere
fleeting and shadowy images of the eternal world of forms. This view finds vivid expression
in the celebrated simile of the Cave.
Each thing is what it is only through the presence of the form in it or through its
participation in the form. Through all the multiplicity and variety of just and unjust acts,
persons, and situations in this world there is in some way only one Justice (and only one
Injustice). And so with every collection of things to which we apply the same name, as
‘’beautiful’’ or “bed”. Various as beautiful things are, there is only one Beauty. In each and
all of the many beautiful things the one Beauty must be there otherwise there would be no
sense in calling anything beautiful. The many beautiful things are however unlike Beauty
itself in that they are born, change, and perish. They are real in so far as they participate in
Beauty itself, and unreal in so far as they do not endure.
(The Greek word Eidos has been variously translated as "idea", "Form", "Archetype",
and "Pattern’’. Following R.L. Nettleship and F.M., Cornford, two eminent Platonic scholars,
we have throughout used the term "Form’’ for Plato’s "eidos’’. The most commonly used
term though is "Idea", but it is misleading as it suggests a mental idea, a thought in the mind.
Form too is misleading, as Aristotle uses it in a different sense. But, then. in a sense every
word is misleading. Nevertheless, as Cornford argues, for readers who have no Greek
"Form’’ seems to be a serviceable term: it has fewest misleading associations.)
It is of interest at this point, before we leave the term "Form", to consider Plato’s view of
the world. In the Timaeus Plato describes in ‘picture language’ the creation of the world. The
world-creator or the world-architect (Demings) embodies in a mythical form the same
attributes as are ascribed to the form of the Good in the Republic. He makes the world to be
as good as possible, because he is himself perfectly good. Further, he makes the world as we
perceive it with the senses after the pattern of a world which is "intelligible": which means
not that there are really two worlds, but that the world as it shines through the senses, is the
manifestation of a intelligible order. The world as we see it reveals, though imperfectly, those
intelligible principles upon which it is really constructed. The easiest way to understand
Plato’s meaning of the Form of the Good is to compare it with certain conceptions of the
divine nature, for example, with the conception of what Shelley calls the "light of the world":
That Light whose smile kindles the universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move
.... that sustaining love
which through the web of being....
Burns light or dim as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst...
(Adonais)

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Perhaps the most famous Platonic lines in English poetry are these from Shelley’s Adonais:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines. Earth’s shadows fly:
Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity....
Shelley’s platonism was highly personal, but he was an inspired platonist and these lines say
eloquently and memorably what we have been trying to say in our pedestrian prose. The
inexplicable splendour of Plato’s philosophy shines through these lines.
Plato holds that man is "not an earthly but a heavenly plant–up from earth towards our
kindred in heaven." We would have you appreciate the classic expression of this platonic
mood in these lines of Wordsworth:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who
is our home ...
(Ode on Intimations of Immortality).
While the Symposium dramatizes the emotional ascent of Man’s life, the Republic gives a
detailed account of Man’s intellectual ascent. The ascent in the Republic is to the Idea of the
Good. The Good with Plato occupies the same place in the moral world as the Sun occupies
in the physical world.
We end this section with a summary paragraph on the place occupied in Plato’s philosophy
by the conception of the Good. The Good, for Plato, is
1. the end of or aim of life, the supreme object of all desire and all aspiration (Not for
Plato value-free science without conscience).
2. the condition of knowledge ‘knowledge is virtue’. Is a famous and much debated
dictum of Socrates
3. the creative and sustaining cause of the world and its contents.
The crucial passage on the Good at 518B runs as follows:
... we must conclude that education is not what it is said to be by some, who profess to put
knowledge into a soul which does not possess it, as if they could put sight into blind eyes. On
the contrary ... the soul of every man does possess the power of learning the truth and the
organ to see it with; and that, just as one might have to tum the whole body round in order

10
that the eye should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from
the changing world, until its eye can bear to contemplate reality and that supreme splendour
which we have called the Good. (Rep. Chap. XXVIVII. 5 I 8B)
This is the gist of Plato’s philosophy. The Forms constitute a hierarchy with the Good at the
apex.
The ascent to the Good and its everlasting possession is the supreme end of human life.
Characteristics of the Forms in Outline
1. Forms are absolute and ultimate realities. They depend on nothing, but all things
depend on them. They are the first principles of things.
2. Forms are universal. A Form is not any particular thing, but it has greater reality than
any particular material object. It is more concrete than the so-called concrete things
which as we say we can grasp.
3. Forms are not ‘things’ but ‘thoughts’. But they are not the thoughts of a person. They
are objective forms and have reality on their own account.
4. Each Form is a unity. It is the one amid the many. The Form of man is one although
individual men are many. There cannot be more than one form for each class of
objects.
5. Forms are eternal. ‘The many beautiful things arise and pass away, but the one Beauty
neither begins nor ends. It is unchangeable and imperishable. The many beautiful
things are but the fleeting shadows of the one eternal Beauty.
6. Forms are the Essences of all things. (The definition gives us what is essential to a
thing. If we define man as a rational animal, this means that reason is of the essence
of man.)
7. Each Form is, in its own kind, an absolute perfection, and its perfection is the same as
its reality.
8. Forms are outside Space and Time. If they were in space, they would have to be in
some particular place, and therefore, would not be universals at all. As they are
unchangeable they are outside time. This does not mean that they are always the same
in time, but that time is irrelevant to them. They are timeless.
9. Forms are rational, that is to say, they are grasped by reason. The finding of the One
in the Many is the work of reason. Through reason alone is the knowledge of the
forms possible.
10. Forms are ideals. They are supreme forms towards which all things are drawn. They
are Powers that draw us towards perfection. If they seem to us so far away, dim and
unreal, it is because we are so far from self-knowledge, so much immersed in what is
destructive to the soul. Without the Forms we should have no world to think about at
all. They are the primary patterns of things, and their ultimate goal.

11
11. Forms are objects of the soul’s desire. The soul is the self-moving force in a man, and
is part of the soul of all things. It has not a material body, and is immortal. It existed
before the body, and has brought with it from previous incarnations many memories
which, when awakened by new life are mistaken for new knowledge (Teaching
merely arouses the recollection of things known by the soul many lives ago. After
death the Soul passes into other bodies, higher or lower according to the merits it has
earned in its previous incarnation.). It longs for the perfect law and structure life and
goal of the human world.
12. The Forms are not only of natural objects, but of manufactured articles. There are
Forms of beds, tables, clothes. And there are forms not only of noble moral entities,
such as Beauty, Love, and Justice. There are also the ideal ugliness, and the ideal
Injustice. There are even forms of the positively nauseating, such as hair, filth, and
dirt. These forms of base things are just as much perfection in their kind as Beauty
and Goodness are in theirs. In general, the principle is that there must be a form
wherever a concept can be formed, i.e., wherever this is a class of many things called
by one name. Thus natural things (willow true), products of art (bed), valuable things
(a child’s smile), qualities and activities (courage), bad and worthless things, ugly and
evil things (a dung heap, a disease) all have an ideal form.
Fortunately for every body, the Republic generally deals with exalted forms. It is in the
Parmenides that Plato investigates the forms of the ugly and evil and filthy things. We will
end, as we began, with Socrates. But first, one word more about the immortal allegory of the
cave. Examine the structure ·of the allegory and you will notice that the ascent of the
prisoners is from darkness to light, from opinion to knowledge, from bondage to freedom.
The allegory generates meaning that no logical argument conducted in abstract language can.
But it is not vague. It is controlled to a high degree by the context of Plato’s philosophy. It
has strange power of suggesting more than it "says". And yet it is precise, having its own
kind of precision. A most important element of Plato’s style is his use of myths, symbols,
metaphors, and allegories. He does not always explain his meaning in the form of direct
exposition. This has led some critics to call these myths fanciful. They are considered to be
weak points of the system. But Plato cannot be convicted of substituting poetic metaphors for
the explanation which is lacking. It is simply not true that Plato slips into metaphors and
myths to escape the rigour of logical statement. In every type of discourse myth and metaphor
are needed elements. In the Republic the cave allegory is an essential element of the
intellectual life of the Dialogue. The cave allegory dramatizes Plato’s theory, and out of it a
new and strange insight arises. The allegory’s scenario carries an authentic picture of the
human condition. There is a marked similarity between, Plato’s prisoners sitting chained in
the half-darkness of the cave with their backs turned to the vast sunlit world outside and
today’s cinema audience "chained to their seats in a dark "cave" with their backs to the real
would outside the cinema hall watching moving pictures, taking shadows for realities. You
have only to suppose with Plato that these modern "prisoners" have remained there for a long,
long time and the rest follows. It is then a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that the
cave allegory weakens the argument of the Republic: Far from being a weakness of Plato’s

12
argument it gives the whole discourse a creative dimension. The process by which Plato’s
philosophers might be led to the knowledge of Good is rendered deeply vivid by the allegory.
We have tried to give you some idea of what is to be found in the Republic, and perhaps we
may have awakened in you the desire to know more about "the wisest and justest and best" of
teachers. Socrates lived his philosophy and was a martyr for it. He refused to beg for mercy
from his accusers nor did he agree of flee Athens to save his life, thus fulfilling the mission of
a true philosopher, to whom an unexamined life was not worth living and who regarded
knowledge as the highest virtue.

Plato: The Republic

Part II
Introduction
In your earlier lesson you have already read that the central concern of The Republic is the
ideal State. You will also recall that The Republic is in the form of dialogues. The discussion
takes place at the house of a wealthy Athenian Cephalus; the chief actors in the discussion are
Socrates, Plato’s mouthpiece, Ademantus and Glaucon, Plato’s brothers, and a determined
Sophist Thrasymachus. They begin by discussing what justice means. But let us remember
that the word had a much wider sense for the Greeks than it has for us today. It was a quality
of personal conduct. The judge who passed a wrong sentence was ‘unjust’, and so was the
guilty man in, his criminal conduct. Justice was a synonym for morality, for virtue. Whatever
was "right" and "good" was ‘’just".
Socrates suggests that justice is to be found in the ideal State. And thus the idea of justice
is neatly linked up with the idea of the ideal State. And given the wide sense in which
‘justice’ is an attribute of morality i.e., right conduct, the question of the ideal city state
acquires three dimensions: political, psychological and ethical (i.e., moral).
Socrates considers various political systems and rejects them all. He considers timarchy
of Sparta3quite imperfect because in it one section of people (the military aristocracy of
Citizens’) lived by exploiting the other (the serfs called the ‘helots’). He dismisses oligarchy
because, based as it is on the power of wealth, it always led to a reckless scramble for wealth
and therefore to exploitation of the community by the wealthy ruling class. It inevitably led to
revolution. But democracy, which might result from a-revolution against the aristocratic or
oligarchic rule is no better; it gives to the people an equal share of freedom and power,
inevitably more than they need or can use. It degenerates into mob-rule of people who are
hardly trained or educated enough to judge the merit of things. It encourages bad leadership,
for the common people select those as their leaders who are cunning but honey-tongued and
proclaim themselves to be the "protectors of the people". To Socrates it seems the most
amazing thing that the very people who would look for a skilled worker for even the smallest
job like shoe-making would entrust the reins of the State to those who have no qualification
whatever for it. The fourth type that Socrates considers is tyranny which results from the

3
See pages 22-24 of your text (Plato: The Republic edited by Desmond Lee (1987) published by Penguins.

13
chaos and degeneration that democracy leads to. In this the violent and criminal instincts of
the despotic ruler get out of hand and he only rules by terror. To think of justice in such a
system is to think of the impossible.
What then is the ideal system? One in which there is perfect harmony and justice, in
which the citizens live an austere and simple life in harmony with nature itself. But such a
paradise, Plato knows, is not attainable because the rulers are greedy and, misusing their
power and position, try to acquire more and more wealth and property.
Here we must keep in mind that for Plato the political problem of finding an ideal state is
linked with the moral problem of ensuring justice in the society. In fact for Socrates and Plato
there is hardly any distinction between morals and politics. ‘The laws of the right are the,
same for classes, and cities as for individual men. Hence, rather than look for a strictly
political solution in terms of a system Plato attempts a psychological solution. After all it is
the greed and injustice of man that perverts a system. Plato believes that there must be men in
a society who, have the capacity to rise above such moral weaknesses and be the right kind of
dedicated, efficient and just rulers.
But how are such rulers to be discovered? Plato was convinced that only the
philosophers could be truly dedicated rulers, competent enough to establish perfect harmony
in the society. With this conviction Plato devises an elaborate system of education which has
the twin purpose of discovering the potential philosopher-rulers and of training them.
But before we discuss Plato’s idea of the kind of education to be imparted to the future
rulers we must refer to a few basic assumptions underlying his theory.
Socrates’ contempt for democracy makes it quite clear that he does not expect everyone
to be capable of becoming a ruler. He believes that men have different aptitudes and the best
thing for a society would be to encourage everyone to concentrate on his or her particular
aptitude. In particular, Socrates focuses on three sources of human behaviour viz., desire,
emotion and knowledge. They are present in every individual but in different proportions.
The seat of desire in the human body is the loins. Men who are dominated by desire are
possessive by nature, always restless to acquire more and more wealth etc. Men dominated by
emotion (with its seat in the heart) will be aggressive, courageous and ambitious. Finally,
men with knowledge (with its seat in the head) are the best product of a society. They delight
in meditation rather than acquisition of worldly things. Greed and vanity do not touch them.
In the ideal state of Socrates these people with different aptitudes will form three different
classes who will be assigned different roles in the society. Men with strong desires will be
Producers (shopkeepers, craftsmen, agriculturists etc.), those with strong emotions will be the
Auxiliaries (the guardians of the state as soldiers) and men with knowledge and wisdom will
be the Rulers. One quality common to all the three classes will be self-control. But men,
Socrates believes, are not self-sufficient. There will be harmony in the society only when
each section sticks to its proper duties. A shopkeeper trying to be a soldier, or a general
assuming the role of a ruler would only mean chaos in the society. Each must know his place
and be satisfied with it.
Let us now turn to Plato’s scheme of education which he discusses in Book III.

14
Education
Greek education in Plato’s day had three principal divisions: reading and writing, physical
education and literary education. Plato adopts this system for his system of education of the
guardians for it takes care of the cultivation of the mind as well as of the body.
The child’s education begins when his nurse or mother tells him stories. Since it is an
impressionable age, Socrates first directs his attention to the content of these stories. He
begins with stories: ‘The greater part of the stories current today we shall have to reject’ (p.
131)4. He then proceeds to give reasons for this rejection. The first stories that a child should
hear should be designed to produce the best possible effect on his character. But, according to
Socrates, the stories that the children hear can only pervert their minds. He cites certain
stories of Homer and Hesiod that set the gods in a bad light and slow them indulging in
intrigues and cruelties against their own kith and kin or causing suffering to mortals or
transforming themselves into human beings playing mischief. If children are to grow up to be
god fearing and holy and if they are to learn to respect their parents they shall not be told
such stories. In fact the state will forbid by law the writing of such blasphemous plays and
stories (p. 139-40).
To sum up Socrates’ arguments:
1. A poet whether he is writing epic, lyric, or drama, should always show the divine
nature as it really is. Because divine nature is always good, gods cannot be evil and
therefore cannot do any evil. Gods can only do good to human beings, the cause of
evil lies elsewhere. The poets must only be allowed to say that the wicked were
miserable because they needed to be punished and the gods were right in punishing
them.
2. Divine nature is perfect in every way. Therefore any change in it would be only for
the worse. But why would gods like to change for the worse? God is a being of entire
simplicity and truthfulness in word and deed. Gods, therefore, can never transform
themselves and play mischief or mislead us by illusion or lies.
The guardians must be brave. Hence children, the would-be guardians, must not hear stories
that make them fear death. Lines that seem to do so shall be struck out from existing plays.
Nor shall famous heroes be shown weeping and grieving over the death of their near and dear
ones.
Self-restraint will be an essential quality of a citizen’s character, more so that of a
guardian. Therefore they shall be taught to control their emotions. If they shall not weep they
shall not laugh overmuch nor eat or drink too much. They shall taught to be truthful and to
resist temptations. They will not be excessive lovers of money.
Plato assigns an important place to poetry and music. Like all Greeks he also believes
that they have a tremendous power in moulding character. "Poetry and music are marked by
rhythm and harmony. The learner absorbs this rhythm and harmony into his very soul and

4
All page numbers refer to the edition mentioned earlier.

15
achieves a gracefulness in both body and mind. In fact, Socrates claims, education in poetry
and music makes a man more sensitive and noble; ‘a proper training in this kind makes a man
quick to perceive any defect or ugliness in art or in nature. Such deformity will rightly disgust
him. Approving all that is lovely he will welcome it home with joy into his soul and,
nourishing thereby grow into a man of noble spirit. All that is ugly and disgraceful he will
rightly condemn ...’ (Cornford’s translation of section 401 e and 402a of The Republic. See p.
163 of Penguin’s The Republic) And again he rejects all poetry that has a bad influence on
moral character. In fact he extends his criticism to the whole field of art: ‘we must issue
similar orders to all artists and craftsmen and prevent then portraying bad character, ill-
discipline ... in sculpture, architecture, or any work of art ... (p.161). For Plato ‘the ultimate
end of all education is insight into the harmonious order (cosmos) of the whole world’
(Cornford). The study of literature, music and even physical training are meant to serve this
end. Both music and gymnastics are needed in education and ultimately both have the welfare
of the soul in view (p.174). But the physical training suitable for a guardian is not as rigorous
as that for a professional athlete. Moderation and simplicity are the key words in the case of a
guardian in training. He has to learn to be neither too tough nor too soft: ‘The two together –
physical training and education in literature and others arts – should produce a harmonious
development of the spirited and the philosophic elements in human character’ (Cornford).
It has to be noted that literature for the Greek child was the source of all moral education
and education in Plato’s time primarily meant teaching the child to be good. Religion did not
have the same hold over the Greek mind as perhaps the Bible today has over a Christian in
matters of moral conduct. Socrates therefore condemns all literature that does not teach
children to be good and virtuous. This attack later develops into a more general attack on art
so much so that he banishes poets from his ideal state. Socrates refuses to believe that the
poets can be the best educators for children. Elsewhere, in Laws, Plato says that ‘the stories
of literature, whether in fact true or not, make for kindred qualities. But there is no learning
there which leads to what you are now seeking’ i.e., a certain knowledge of philosophy. This,
of course, is essential for the would-be rulers, in particular. As a result, he censures just what
we consider the imperishable contributions of Athens to art and literature of the world
because they have tendencies which are unfavourable to the highest development of moral
personality.
Plato’s Theory of Art
Plato’s views on art must have been shocking to his contemporaries. And more than two
thousand years later the modern mind can only consider him to be perverse when he
condemns the greatest artists that Greece has ever produced–and the list includes immortal
names like Sophocles and Homer.
Plato’s criticism of art, especially poetry, is based principally on his theory of Imitation. But
before we discuss this theory let us very briefly summarize his arguments in the tenth book
(pp.471-39).
1. All art is representation or imitation (the Greek word is mimesis) of an original, that
is, the form as defined in the theory of forms.

16
2. An artist’s representation is at the third remove from reality or truth. To take the
example of a bed, first there is its Form in nature, then its imitation by a carpenter,
and finally, its picture by the painter. The painter, and by extension any imitative
artist including the tragedian, is inferior to even an artisan. What the artist produces is
appearance and not reality.
3. The claim of the poets and tragedians, especially Homer, that they are masters of all
skills and know all about human excellence and religion etc., are baseless. Neither
Homer nor other poets had a real knowledge of the subjects they wrote about–war,
statesmanship administration, human conduct etc.
4. Poetry uses words, metre rhythm and music to create a picture but if you remove these
elements it has no substance left.
5. Another way to look at a thing’s worth is in terms of its use, manufacture and
representation (in contrast to form, manufacture and representation above). Only the
user knows best about a thing’s worth, the artist knows little or nothing about it. The
art of representation has no serious value. This is true of all tragic poetry, epic or
dramatic.
6. Art in general and poetry in particular deals with the less rational part of our nature;
the tragic drama depicts grief and suffering of the characters rather than their courage
and fortitude in the face of a misfortune.
7. Poetry, dramatic poetry in particular, most often corrupts even the best characters. It
arouses our baser instincts by ‘representing’ sex, anger, vulgarity (through dirty
jokes). In essence, it perverts our moral sense.
To sum up, poetry has a low degree of truth, deals with a low element in our mind and very
often has a corrupting influence on the audience. Therefore, the poetry of pleasure and poetry
of grief shall both be cast out of Plato’s ideal state so that pain and pleasure do not rule in
place of law and reason. In short, the poet will be banished.
Theory of Imitation
In the third book of The Republic Socrates discusses the kind of stories that should be told to
the guardians in their early childhood and finds many tales about gods that would be
undesirable for this purpose. He ‘pleads for a censorship of art and cites passages from
Homer and Sophocles and others that should be deleted. In the tenth book this attack on
poetry develops into a general attack on art leading to the conclusion that art that has no
social or educative value (and most art is worthless in this respect, according to Socrates)
should be banished from his ideal state.
The basic ground for this banishment now is that all art is a case of mimesis. Socrates has
already used this word in the third book when he discusses three different forms of Poetry
‘narrative’ (as in lyric poetry), mimesis or representation (in drama, both tragedy and
comedy) And a mixture of both (in epic)5.He now uses the term mimesis to describe artistic
creation as a whole. We must, however, note that Plato uses the term mimesis in different
5
Read pages 152-153 of the text.
17
senses in The Republic. It has the general sense of imitation and a particular sense of
representation or impersonation.
In the third book mimesis was used in the sense of representation alone. In drama the
author identifies himself emotionally with his character and in this emotional identification
comes to represent or impersonate that character fully. In the theatre this emotional,
identification extends to the audience. This is undesirable, especially, if the guardians
emotionally identify themselves with evil characters.
In the tenth book the word mimesis is used in both the senses of representation and
imitation: in case of tragedy and comedy and in Homer (in his fondness for direct speech),
mimesis essentially implies representation; both representation and imitation are implied in
fine arts like painting. Applying his theory of forms Socrates shows that all products of
imitative art are at third remove from the truth i.e., the essential nature of a thing. If a painter
paints a bed it is only a copy of a copy. First there is the form of the bed created by god, then
its imitation created by the carpenter and finally its copying by the painter and that too of
only a particular aspect (for the painter cannot fully imitate the carpenter). The painter
therefore is inferior to even a craftsman for he only creates appearances. Plato further
remarks that a fine art such as painting is like producing reflections of objects in a mirror. He
is, in effect, attacking realism in art which believes that a work of art is an image of likeness
of some original, or holds a mirror up to nature.
Socrates concludes that the tragic poet and all other imitative artists are like the painter at
third remove from the truth, from the reality.
Implications for poetry-The implications of most art being imitative are far deeper for
poetry than for other arts. Plato attacks poetry not only for being at third remove from truth
but also on psychological grounds. Drama represents characters in all kinds of actions,
pleasant and unpleasant and in all kinds of emotions indiscriminately. It shows them
succumbing to grief and anguish whereas in real life men might like to face up to their
misfortunes: the imitative poet is a maker of images, far distant from the truth.
This ‘being distant from truth’ leads Plato to contest the value of poetry as the true
source of knowledge. Poets, for the Greeks, were infallible guides. But Plato says that they do
not possess knowledge, which alone is infallible. He therefore refuses to accept the social and
educative value of poetry. We can now see the full implications of Plato’s theory of art as
imitation: artists indulge in uncritical copying of an object and are quite uncritically affected
emotionally by it. Hence artists especially poets (by far the most influential of artists) stand
banished from Plato’s ideal state.
The harsh criticism and the extreme penalty of exile for the poets might seem irrational
and one can rightfully object that Plato has quite ignored the aesthetic aspect of literature or
that art does try to search for truth which intellect cannot reach with mere logic. Plato has
indeed ignored all this. But we must remember that he has concerned himself with the social
and educative value alone of art in The Republic, especially because poets in his time were
considered as the most important source of knowledge. And we also know that both poetry
and philosophy have, since ancient times, claimed to be the real source of truth and

18
knowledge. In this quarrel between poetry and philosophy Plato obviously sides with
philosophy.

Select Bibliography
F.M. Cornford 1982 The Republic by Plato. Oxford University Press
Desmond Lee 1987 Plato: The Republic. Penguins.
R.L. Nettleship 1963 Lectures on The Republic of Plato. Macmillan
A.E Taylor 1986 Plato : The Man and His Work. Methuen

19
 Reading Material
Some Commentaries
I. Poetry has already been discussed together with the other arts as part of education; nothing
has prepared us for the statement in Book X which is now to have met better justification, in
terms of the soul’s parts, for the banishment of all imitative poetry. In Books 2 and 3 poetry
was just one of the arts, though the most important. Here (in Book X) Plato singles it out for
attack in a way impossible to reconcile with Book 3.
In Book 3 only some poetry was imitative. Here all poetry is, but we soon see that
something different is meant by ‘imitation’, for Plato’s model of imitative art is now painting.
Abruptly, we are given two arguments which claim that all that a painter does is to copy the
way things appear, and then treat poetry as though this were what it did too. They are among
the most famous, and outrageous, arguments in Plato.
The first argument claims to show that all artists lack knowledge. A craftsman copies a
form to produce a bed; the painter, more superficial, only copies the way the bed appears. We
have already seen how odd the role of Forms here is. They are introduced here to emphasize
the idea that the painter merely copies particular things, a fairly fatuous thing to do; he does
not even achieve the level of the craftsman, who at least embodies general principles of
function and design in his products.
Mimesis or ‘imitation’ was introduced in Book 3 in the context of the performing arts,
and was best thought of there as expressing or representing. But here it is introduced by what
the painter does, and is rather the literal copying of one visual aspect of a particular thing. It
is explicitly said to be like holding a mirror up to reflect things. Clearly no-one who does this
requires knowledge or even true belief; mindless copying is possible if one lacks
understanding of one’s subject-matter and even if one had false beliefs about it. Plato is
talking about trompe-l’ovil painting (which actually takes more skill than he allows), not
painting as he has talked about it before through the Republic. He could not be more insistent
that imitation is an exact copying of the way things in the world look; it may take effort but it
is not creative in any way, any more than mirroring the world is.
Plato now talks as though the same were true of poets like Homer; he has already made
the claim about the tragic poets. They too are said to be mere imitators who produce
something ‘at three removes from real nature’ requiring no comprehension of what is
imitated.
But the claim just made about painting does not carry across to poetry, precisely because
of the very narrow account given of what the painter’s activity is. Poets do not do anything
that can be compared to holding up a mirror to particular things, or capturing the perspective
of the way a bed looks from one angle of vision. Plato just assumes that he can talk of poetry
as being a ‘mere image’, at third remove from real nature’, and the like, without considering
that these terms have only been given their sense within the meta-physical picture of Form,
particular, and painting, and that this model does not fit poetry in any obvious way. In fact,
when Plato expands on the way in which the poet lacks knowledge, he does not use this
picture at all, but a quite different one. Now we are told that the person with knowledge and
20
understanding is the user, the person with mere true belief but no understanding of the maker;
the imitator is the person with neither. So the poet as imitator is the person who neither makes
nor uses what he is talking about; not the person who has grasp of a Form. Forms, which are
not objects of use, do not fit into the picture at all; the contrast is not between levels of
reality, but between different ways of relating to things on a single level of reality, since one
uses, makes or imitates the same kind of thing, like bridles or flutes. (Plato could have said
that the poet only describes particular things, in contrast to the person with understanding
who has turned away from the shadows on the wall towards the state of enlightenment that
grasps only Forms; but he does not.) Plato’s actual points against the poet’s claims to
knowledge are quite common sensical (and similar to points he makes in other dialogues); the
poet, he says, describes activities, like those of generals, about which he has absolutely no
understanding, and therefore there is no reason for us to give his works the respectful
attention which they get.
So the reasons for saying that the painter lacks knowledge do not carry over to the poet,
Plato has made a few points against the poet’s claim to have knowledge, but has done nothing
to show that the imitates in the way that a trompe-l’ovil painter does, or that his works are
mere images and at third remove from real nature. He has not established that the poet
imitates in the pejorative sense established for the painter. But this is the only sense so far
given to us in Book 10. We cannot appeal to Book 3 to fill out the sense in which the poet
imitates. For, in Book 3 imitation was not what the poet did, but what the person did who
recited or acted the poet’s works; the distinction between imitative and non-imitative was
there drawn within poetry, whereas in Book 10 all poetry is said to be imitative.
The second argument goes as follows. Scene-painting relies on various kinds of optical
illusion, flat surfaces can be made to appear three-dimensional, just as straight stickes can
look bent in water, and concave surfaces appear convex. What happens in cases like this is
that part of the soul is taken in and accepts the appearance at face value, but the reasoning
part does not; it relies instead on objective procedures for finding out the true state of affairs,
like measuring, counting, and weighing. So we find two parts of the soul in conflict. The
reasoning part, relying on objective ways of finding out the truth, is clearly the better part, so
painting appeals to the inferior part of the soul (whose worthlessness is dwelt on). Plato now
applies this point to poetry. Poetry appeals to and strengthens the lower, desiring part of the
soul, which is apt to resist reason. It encourages us to give in to our immediate feelings and
emotions when reason would forbid their gratification because it is useless or harmful for the
agent if he considers his life as a whole and the true value of human attachments.
This distinction of reason and lower part of the soul, however, appears to be a totally
different one from the one appealed to in the case of painting. How can the strength and
importunate nature of one’s desires have anything to do with one’s being taken in by optical
illusions? The lowest part of the soul to which poetry appeals is one which itself gives scope
for imitation, since it is the tendency to be led by emotion which provides most of tragedy’s
best plots. But this cannot be identified with the part which passively and unreflectively
accepts appearances and is led to judge that a straight stick in water is bent. It is absurd to
suggest that this is a rich source of dramatic material. The argument from painting does not
carry over to poetry because the parts of the soul distinguished are not the same in both cases;
21
conclusions drawn from the conflict of reason and another part in the one case have no
application to the other. Some try to escape this problem by claiming that Plato does not even
think that the two contrasts drawn are the same; his language suggests that he may think of
the part of the soul opposed to reason as being not a unity but a collection of bad tendencies.
But this does not avoid the problem that reason’s role does not come out the same in the two
cases. And anyway if the parts of the soul appeared to in the two cases are not the same, then
Plato has no argument at all; he would have no semblance of justification for claiming that
the worthlessness of painting proves anything about poetry.
These two arguments raise, incidentally, problems about how either of the divisions of
the soul here fit with the divisions we have become used to throughout the book. None of the
roles of reason and the lowest part of the soul have any perspicuous connection to their roles
as seen so far in the theory of the soul’s parts that Plato has used to establish conclusions
about justice. Further, it is hard to see how the third part, spirit is to fit in; its roles seem to be
partitioned between the two factors distinguished here. The rational part in fighting grief and
sorrow is said to obey nomos, ‘law’ or ‘convention’, in a way that makes it look like the kind
of motivation developed in the Auxiliaries. The rational principle determines how it feels, but
is seen as external to it. On the other hand, the emotions that have to be resisted, like grief,
seem at least as conceptually complex as anger, the spirit’s main emotion, and they are not
very like desires for particular objects. Plato in fact is very vague here about the soul’s lower
part. It does not have its clear role of being a collection of particular desires whose reasoning
capacity is limited to the attaining of particular satisfactions. It is treated as simply the trashy
part, the part, whatever it is like, that opposes reason. Plato presumably fails to see that his
argument will not work, that desire has nothing to do with optical illusion, because he thinks
of the lower part of the soul as being merely the trashy and reason-resisting part. In this
passage he always refers to it simply as the worthless part, keeping in the background the fact
that to be consistent with its roles elsewhere it would have to be the desiring part.
In both these arguments we find. Plato trying (unsuccessfully) to assimilate poetry to
painting–and to a debased form of painting at that. This underlines the most striking and
surprising feature of these two arguments. In Book 3 Plato was concerned to stress how
important the role of the arts is especially that of poetry. The poetry that surrounds people can
decisively influence their beliefs, for better or worse. (Plato is mainly thinking of the effects
on the developing minds of the young, but he is also concerned with people who have grown
up; there is no relaxation of censorship for adults). The arts, and particularly poetry, are
important because the education Plato stresses is character education, not academic training.
It is vital that the Guardians have not just the right beliefs but the right attitudes and motives,
and so it is important that their characters be developed by exposure to the right kind of
poetry and art. Existing poetry, like Homer’s, is attacked and severely censored because it is
seen as dangerous. However, in these two arguments in Book 10 poetry has been presented as
essentially trivial, as tacky as scene-painting, something that no serious person would bother
wasting time over. Plato has gone from accepting that poetry is important and dangerous, to
trying to prove that it is really trivial and marginal).
The forced and unconvincing assimilation to trompe-l’vil painting is vital for Plato’s
downgrading of poetry. Throughout this passage poetry is assailed in terms of contempt that
22
have become famous. ‘The poet, we are told, is despised because he devotes his life to
making images instead of originals; he deals with images of virtue only; he and his works are
at third remove from the truth; he lacks knowledge and even true belief because he deals only
in images, he is an imitator and as such held in low regard; his imitations consort with an
inferior part of the soul, and he goes in for easy popularity because most people lack the
discernment to see his products for what they are, mindless production appealing to the
mindless part of the soul. All these attempts to get us to see poetry as being trivial are given
their sense by the assimilation to painting. We have seen that the way we were introduced to
imitation in Book 3 did not suggest that imitation was trivial or contemptible; rather the
reverse, in fact. We have seen that the assimilation Book 10 attempts does not work, and that
Plato’s real hits against poetry are not dependent on it; but it is the sole base for his
denunciations of poetry as worthless and stupid.
Plato now adds a third argument against poetry; and to our surprise it reverts to the stand
point of Book 3 in complete contrast to the previous two arguments. The gravest charge
against poetry, Socrates says, has yet to be brought. It is able to corrupt even good men, with
very few exceptions, and.... is a terribly dangerous thing. The arts, and especially poetry,
encourage all our desires and make them hard to cope with in our own lives. The part of us
that takes pleasure in watching actors lament is the part that longs to indulge our own grief,
taking pleasure in laughing at comedies tends to make us cynical and unserious in real life.
The effect of poetry is to encourage the desires that ought to be suppressed in the virtuous
life. And Plato concludes, going beyond Book 3, that poetry is so dangerous, and so
attractive, that it must be banished entirely from the ideally just state. He recognizes that this
seems philistine, and perhaps absurd, but the struggle to be good or bad is important.
This argument is not merely a more rhetorical repetition of what was said in the second
one. It may seem so, because it renews the point that poetry fosters the lower part of the soul
against the rule of reason. But there are three important differences. Plato has reverted to the
Book 3 attitude of recognizing the importance of poetry in people’s lives (here he is thinking
of the performances of tragedy and recitations of Homer). In the first Book 10 argument,
Plato would have had us believe that poets are actually despised because they are not real
moral teachers with knowledge. Secondly, in this argument he has given up talking of poetry
in visual terms derived from the forced assimilation to painting. He talks straight forwardly
about what goes on in the theatre, and its effects on people. And thirdly, and most important,
he has reverted to the idea that poetry is important and dangerous, not something
contemptible and fatuous like mindless copying. Homer can make one stray from the right
path, and that is why although poetry has genuine pleasures, Homer is to be banished.
We thus get the odd spectacle of Plato arguing passionately for the banishment of poetry
because of its danger to the moral life, on the basis of arguments that show (if they
succeeded) that poetry is so trivial that it has no moral significance at all. This passage of
Book X makes us aware of a serious problem. It is not just that it adds a discussion of poetry
that changes the meaning and scope of imitation and argues that all poetry should be
banished, whereas Book 3 was more tolerant. The problem is deeper than that— Plato seems
to hold two inconsistent views about poetry; that it is important and dangerous, and so should
either be censored and tamed in the service of a truly moral life or expelled from the truly
23
moral life altogether as being hopelessly untrustworthy; and that it is a trivial and fatuous
thing, too pathetic even to be immoral. It is the first of these views which Plato holds most
consistently and which makes most sense of the development of the Republic. Plato is bound
to be worried about the influence of poetry when he gives such weight to the education of
people’s desires and characters, and it is only realistic for him to bear in mind the important
role of poetry in the popular education of his own day. (In a modern context he would be
talking about other forms of popular culture. By contrast he has to try and prove that poetry is
trivial. This he attempts in the first two arguments of Book 10; arguments that do not work,
because they rely on a forced and unconvincing assimilation of poetry to a wholly distinct art
form. (In any case they raise problems of consistency with what Plato says elsewhere about
knowledge, Forms, and the parts of the soul). It is therefore a mistake to take these two
arguments as being the essence of Plato’s ‘theory of art’, as is often done. In the course of
trying to prove a conclusion, the triviality of poetry, which he elsewhere implicitly rejects,
Plato puts forward a view of both poetry and painting which he endorses nowhere else. To
find Plato’s views on poetry, we would do better to look at Book 3, the third argument of
Book 10 and other dialogues such as the Ion and the Phaedrus.
II. From The Republic by F.M. Cornford (1973) Published by Oxford.
The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry
The attack on poetry in this Part has the air of an appendix, only superficially linked with the
preceding and following context. Possibly the strictures on dramatic poetry in Chapter IX had
become known6 and provoked criticism to which Plato wished to reply. In discussing the
early education of the Guardians he began by limiting the dramatic recitations of school-
children to the impersonation (mimesis) of appropriate types of character and forbidding the
realistic imitation (also mimesis) of animals’ cries and lifeless noises. Then, somewhat
unexpectedly, he proposed to banish altogether from his commonwealth all poetry which did
not conform to these standards, in terms which suggested the complete exclusion of tragedy
and comedy.
The excuse for returning to the subject of poetry is that, since that earlier passage, we
have had (i) the metaphysical distinction of the intelligible world of Forms known to the
philosopher and the sensible world which alone is recognized by the lover of sights and
sounds (Chapters XIX and XXIV); and (2) the analysis of the soul into three elements
(Chapter XIII). These furnish the basis for a wider attack (i) on poetry and art in general as
far removed from any apprehension of reality and (2) on dramatic poetry as psychologically
injurious.
How Representation in Art is Related to Truth
Readers who take this chapter as stating, for its own sake, an aesthetic theory of the nature of
art are surprised and shocked: the point of view seems as perverse, and even stupid, as

6
Since books were not printed or published at a fixed date, MS. copies of parts of a long work might be
circulated privately and pass out of the author's control. In the Parmenides Zeno complains that this had
happened to an early treatise of his own, which he would have preferred to suppress.

24
Tolstoy’s in What is Art? The main object of attack, however, is the claim, currently made by
sophists and professional reciters of the Homeric poems,7 that Homer in particular, and in a
less degree the tragedians, were masters of all technical knowledge, from wagon- building or
chariot-driving to strategy, and also moral and religious guides to the conduct of life.8 As
such, the poet becomes the rival of the philosopher as conceived by Plato, and the study of
poetry an alternative to the severe intellectual training of the Academy. If wisdom is to be
gained only through knowledge of the real world of Forms disclosed by Dialectic, the claim
that the poet can educate mankind to virtue must be as hollow as the pretence that the artist
knows all about shoe making because he can paint a life-like picture of a shoemaker. How
much knowledge of ultimate values does the poet need in order to paint in words his pictures
of human life?
The painter is taken first by way of illustration. A picture of a bed is a two-dimensional
representation of the appearance of a solid object seen at a certain angle. The object itself is
only a particular bed, which, as a part of the material world, is not a wholly real thing, since it
comes into being and perishes and is perpetually changing; it belongs to the realm of
Becoming characterized in Chapter XIX. This actual bed, however, is nearer `to reality than
the picture, because it is one of many embodiments of the essential nature common to all
beds. Beds can be made of wood or iron or canvas and may vary indefinitely in size, shape,
colour, etc. But they cannot be called beds at all unless they serve the purpose of a bed, a
thing designed to be slept on. This purpose, however hard to define, may be called the
essence or Form of Bed, and in Plato’s view it is the unique and unvarying reality which must
be, however imperfectly, embodied in any bed, and is in one sense the meaning of the word
‘Bed.’ (Plato speaks here of this essential Bed as ‘in the nature of things,’ i.e. in the real
world of Forms, and as made by a god, though the Forms are elsewhere described as not
made by anyone, but eternal, and there is a difficulty in supposing eternal Forms of the
products of human workmanship. These points, however, need not be pressed. The bed was
perhaps chosen for illustrative purposes because beds are obviously made by a practical
craftsman, whom Plato wishes to contrast with the fine artist, whereas the maker of natural
objects, the divine Demiurge of the Timaeus, is a mythical figure who could not be
introduced without a long explanation.) The upshot is that the artist’s picture of a bed is at
two removes from the essential Form. It is only as it were a mirror-image of a sensible thing,
which itself is only one embodiment (with many accidental features) of the real Form, the
object of knowledge.
Poetry is like a picture in words, a representation of life. However skilfully executed, it is
no evidence that the poet really possessed the knowledge required for the right conduct of
actual life. This knowledge is not to be gained by studying his portraits of heroic characters,
any more than we can learn how to drive a chariot or conduct a campaign from his
descriptions of a chariot-race or of the Trojan war. Socrates’ examination of the poet had
convinced him that they worked, not with conscious intelligence„ but from inspiration, like
7
Such as Ion in Plato's dialogue of that name.
8
In Xenophon's Symposium, iii. 5. Niceratus says his father made him learn all Homer by heart in order that he
might become a good man.

25
seers and oracle-mongers who do not understand the meaning of the fine language they use
(Apology, 22 B).
In this chapter mimesis has a wider sense than dramatic impersonation: the nearest
English word is `representation,’ applicable to many forms of fine art. The usual rendering
‘imitation’ is misleading. We do not say that Garrick, still less that Shakespeare, imitated the
character of Hamlet; or that Raphael imitated Julius II; or that the Passion music imitates
religious emotion. In all these cases mimesis would be used. The substantive mimetes can be
rendered in this context by ‘artist.’ On the other hand, memesis does also mean `imitation,’
and this encourages the suggestion that tragic acting is on a level with mimicry and that fine
art in general is no more than a copying of external appearances. The view that a work of art
is an image or likeness (eikon) of some original, or holds a mirror up to nature, became
prominent towards the end of the fifth century together with the realistic drama of Euripides
and the illusionistic painting of Zeuxis. Plato’s attack adopts this theory. The art which claims
to be ‘realistic’ is, in his view, as far as possible reality.
III. From Introduction to Aristotle/Horace/Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism by T.S.
Dorsch (1965) Published by Penguin Books
Everyone knows that Plato attacked poets and poetry, and excluded poets from his ideal
republic. It is not so generally known that he attacked them only for particular reasons and in
particular contexts. He himself wrote poetry, and wrote very poetically in his prose works;
and although there were qualities in much existing poetry of which he did not approve, it is
clear from many remarks in the dialogues that, generally speaking, he found much pleasure in
poetry. In The Republic, where his so- called attack is most fully developed, his main
preoccupations are Political, not artistic. He banishes literature and the arts because they have
no political utility and may indeed exert an adverse influence on the particular virtues that
must be himself wrote poetry, and wrote very poetically in his prose works; and although
there were qualities in much existing poetry of which he did not approve, it is clear from
many remarks in the dialogues that, generally speaking, he found much pleasure in poetry. In
The Republic, where his so- called attack is most fully developed, his main preoccupations
are Political, not artistic. He banishes literature and the arts because they have no political
utility and may indeed exert an adverse influence on the particular virtues that must be
fostered for the proper maintenance of his ideal common- wealth. He banishes the poets, but
before doing so, he anoints them with myrrh and crowns them with garlands. He must banish
them on political grounds, but honours them by other standards.
Plato’s discussion of poetry in The Republic is to be found at the end of the second and
the beginning of the third Books, and in the tenth Book. In Book III he is mainly concerned
with the education of the Guardians of his commonwealth, and he begins with their literary
education, which he considers under three heads, theological moral, and formal.
Now young people are impressionable, says Socrates, and any impression we choose to
make leaves a permanent mark. He goes on to argue that God is perfectly good, and therefore
both changeless and incapable of deceit, but the poets often show him as falling short in these
respects; they misrepresent gods and heroes, ‘like a portrait painter who fails to catch a
likeness, and thus in the theological sense they are unsuitable preceptors (Republic II, 377-
26
83). On moral grounds, too, most existing poetry is unsuitable for educational purposes, for in
their accounts of the gods and of the great heroes of the past the poets have depicted various
forms of moral weakness, and here again they will have a bad effect on the minds of the
young (ibid.III, 386-92). In the discussion of the form, or manner of presentation, of poetry
we encounter for the first time the term mimesis, or imitation, which is to figure so largely
again in book X of The Republic and in Aristotle’s Poetics. Here in Book III Plato uses it in a
rather specialized sense, perhaps best translated as `impersonation’: that is, what the poet
does when he is not speaking in his own person, as he does in lyric, but, by the use of direct
speech in drama or in parts of epic, represents or impersonates another person. In their
reading aloud from the poets (which formed a large part of Greek education) the young future
Guardians, Plato causes Socrates to say, will learn by the poets’ example to depart from their
own characters by having to represent other characters, including bad character. This will not
do in a republic in which everyone has to learn how best to play his own part, and not to
interfere with the functions of other people (ibid. III, 394-8). For his illustrations of the bad
influence of the poets on the bringing up of his Guardians Plato draws chiefly on Homer,
Hesiod and the tragic playwrights.
At the beginning of Book X (595-602.) Plato’s general argument is that poetry and the
arts are illusion. In comparison with the meaning he attaches to it in Book III, he greatly
extends and deepens the sense of the term mimesis. He now uses it to signify imitation, or
representation, in the much wider sense of the copying of reality—of the objects and
circumstances of the actual world—by means of literature and the visual arts. In literature this
implies the attempt to reproduce life exactly as it is. Of this Plato cannot approve, and he
gives the grounds of his disapproval in terms of his Theory of Ideas. According to this theory
everything that exists, or happens, in this world is an imperfect copy of an ideal object or
action or state that has an ideal existence beyond this world. The productions of the poets
(and artists) are therefore imitations of imperfect copies of an ideal life; they are third-hand
and unreal, and can teach us nothing of value about life.
Plato goes on to argue in some detail that the appeal of poetry is to the lower, less
rational, part of our nature: it strengthens the lower elements in the mind at the expense of
reason.
Finally Plato takes up again the charge that poetry is a bad moral influence. But whereas
in Book III he had related his argument to the education of his Guardians, here he widens its
scope, as he has done with mimesis. He now maintains that poetry, especially dramatic
poetry, has a had moral effect on these, who hear it, for they soon learn to admire it, and
thence to model themselves on the weaknesses and faults that it represents.
In The Laws, where his subject is again the nature of an ideal state, Plato’s discussion of
the place of literature and art in education is more general. The citizens, he says, must be
educated in good art, and good art, he concludes, is that in which not only is the imitation –
all art being imitative–as true as it is possible to wisdom. But, in the arguments put forward
by Socrates, Plato makes clear his belief that this indiscriminate admiration for the poets is
mere superstition, and that their judgements on conduct and morality are unreliable. This
unreliability comes from the fact that, as Plato expresses it in the Apology (22c), poets

27
compose their works not under the influence of wisdom, ‘but by reason of some natural
endowment and under the power of non-rational inspiration’. This notion of the irrationality
of the poets is further developed in the Phaedrus (244) and the Ion (534), where they are
equated with madmen and men who merely reproduce in a state of frenzy what the Muse has
inspired them to say. Nor will Plato have anything to do with the allegorical interpretation,
fashionable in his day, of that which in the poets appears obscure or contradictory. He rejects
such interpretations, not only in The Republic, but also in the Protagoras (347e) and the
Phaedrus (229).
Much has been made of Plato’s animadversions on poets and poetry, but be is very far
from being merely a negative critic. Even in The Republic (607) he is ready to give a
favourable hearing to those who wish to defend poetry, ‘as we shall gain much if we find her
a source of profit as well as pleasure’; and, as has been shown, he is in The Laws prepared to
accept the mimetic arts of epic and drama if only their poets will imitate worthy things.
However, he puts forward more positively constructive views than these. In the
Phaedrus (245a, 265 he gives a deeper meaning to the concept of inspiration than that which
has already been mentioned; inspiration, can indeed, give rise to the utterances of a madman,
but it can also be ‘a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention’. In
the same work (264) he discusses the principle of organic unity, which he considers basic to
the whole idea of art. He speaks to the same effect in the Gorgias (503), and touches on it
also in The Republic (398). In other respects he inaugurates systems or points of view which
have become commonplaces in the criticism of later ages. In The Republic, as has been seen,
he draws distinctions, according to their manner of presentation, between epic, lyric, and
drama. In The Laws (817) he speaks of the truest tragedy as that which represents the best and
noblest type of life, a view later developed by Aristotle, and taken up by Renaissance critics.
In The Republic (387, 605) and the Phaedrus (268) he accepts pity and fear as the emotions
particularly awakened by tragedy, another conception which was carried further by Aristotle.
In the Philebus (47-8) he embarks on a topic which has been much discussed by recent
theorists of tragedy, that of ‘tragic pleasure’ – the special kind of pleasure that we derive
from watching a good tragedy. He is the first critic who is known to have theorized
constructively on the nature of comedy, largely in the Philebus (48-9). And it may he
mentioned in passing that he also contributed sensibly to rhetorical theory.
So far Plato has been considered only as a speculative critic. He frequently demonstrates
that he is a good practical critic as well. To give only two or three examples, in the
Symposium (194-7) he exposes the extravagances and mannerisms of the poet Agathon by
means of devastating parody. In the Protagoras (344) he causes Socrates to deride Protagoras
and others for their misguided methods in criticizing an ode by Simonides; Socrates himself
draws attention to its excellent craftsmanship and its wealth of fine detail, and says that it
should be judged according to its total effect, not merely by reference to isolated phrases.
Moreover, Plato more than once mocks the sensationalism of contemporary tragic
playwrights, and in the Cratylus (425) their excessive use of the deus ex machina to get them
out of difficult situation.

28
 Unit-5 (b)

Poetics
Aristotle
(Chapters: 6-17, 23, 24 & 26)
Shriya Pandey

1. Introduction
1.1 Who is Aristotle?
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the son of Nicomachus, a court physician to Amyntas II
grandfather of Alexander III of Macedon widely known as Alexander the Great. In 343 B C,
King Philip of Macedon invited Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander III. Aristotle was also
one of the brightest students at Plato’s academy, who just like his mentor established
‘Lyceum’ in Athens, a school of rhetoric and philosophy. Aristotle had to move to Chalcis in
Macedonia after being charged with impiety just like Socrates.
Andronicus of Rhodes in the 1st century BC published the only one quarter of actual
work by Aristotle which survived. It is through these lecture notes indited by Aristotle and his
students that he is known in the literary world. Aristotle was captivated by empirical
observation of natural phenomenon, more so biology. His notable contribution to the history
of thoughts traverses several fields such as literary criticism, ethics, politics and various
branches of natural science.
1.2Aristotle’s Poetics
‘Poetics’ was written around 335 BC and is considered to be the first formal philosophical
explanation of literary theory. As we know. Aristotle was a student in Plato’s academy. Plato
in his work the ‘Republic’ (375 BC) criticized poetry, as unscholarly and mere imitation of
‘real’. In Book X of the ‘Republic’ Plato says, “We will give her champions, not poets
themselves but poet lovers, an opportunity to make her defense in plain prose and show that
she is not only sweet- as we well know- but also helpful to society and the life of man, and
we will listen in a kindly spirit. For we shall be gainers, I take it, if this can be proved.” It
could be said that Aristotle after reading these lines took upon himself to establish the
significance of poetry.
‘Poetics’ looks into poetry “in itself”. The work tries to lay the ground work that would
accord poetry the status of productive sciences that served a social and moral purpose.
‘Poetics’ as it is now constituted is incomplete; it is believed by academicians that there was
more than one book. The fragment as we read now has total of 26 chapters.

29
2. Learning Objectives
The philosophy and literary theory of Aristotle integrally shaped the field of western literary
criticism. After going through this lesson you will be able to;
 Understand Aristotle`s contribution to the history of thoughts and its significance in
shaping the field of literary criticism.
 Recognize the allusions in various literary works and also interpret the terms of a
critical debate, as well as its larger socio-political implication.
 Understand what constitutes a Tragedy
 Understand the idea of a Plot
 Understand the concept of Unity of Action and the language of tragedy
 Understand characterization and who is an ideal Hero of a tragedy
 Differentiate between Epic and Tragedy
 Understand the Metaphysical and Ethical Contexts of the ‘Poetics’
3. Synopsis
3.1 CHAPTER VI: A discourse on Tragedy and its component parts.
According to Malcolm Heath’s translation, Aristotle defines Tragedy in chapter VI as
follows:
“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable [spoudaios, serious], complete and
possess magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different
parts, performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the
purification of such emotions.”
Hence, Aristotle defines Tragedy as, the imitation of an action that is of relative
importance, seriousness and complete in itself. The language should be such that it affords
satisfaction and is used to express the needs of the separate parts of the work, in a dramatic
and not narrative form. There should be a sense of rhythm and harmony, with songs and
verses used accordingly to give the described incident a sense of completeness. The incidents
should invoke the feeling of pity and fear, so as to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.
By action (praxis) Aristotle refers to the sequence of events in a play; beginning, middle and
the end. Language (lexis) as mentioned earlier includes dialogue and songs.
Aristotle further moves on to highlight the six component parts of Tragedy Spectacle,
Character, Fable, Diction, Melody, and Thought. He begins the section with an introduction
of Spectacle, which is the mask worn by the actors as well as their costumes. Melody is the
choric odes or lyric poetry. Diction is the composition of verses or can also signify the
exchange of conversation between actors along with the song sung by the chorus. Both
Diction and Melody are a means of imitation by the actors. Two more components are
introduced by him which are; Character (ethos), the moral aspects of the agents in a play and,
Thought or reasoning (dianoia) which is the reflective aspect of the agents in a play. Aristotle

30
binds the five components together through the idea of Fable or Plot, which the combination
of the incidents or things done in the story.
According to Aristotle, the most important of the six is the Plot or combination of the
incidents of the story. Character in a plot gives it quality but it is included for the sake of
action, which is its Fable or Plot. It is the plot which is the chief purpose of the Tragedy.
Hence, it is possible to not have a strong character but a tragedy is impossible without action.
A Tragedy might not produce the true tragic effect even after eloquent series of characteristic
speeches which are Thought and Diction if it has an inferior plot. The indispensable
constituent of Tragedy, Peripeties and Discoveries, are a part of plot. Aristotle considers
Melody to be the greatest of pleasurable accessories of Tragedy and Spectacle nothing more
than a mere attraction. Yet, he firmly believes Plot is the life and soul of any Tragedy.
Check Your Progress-1
1. How does Aristotle define Tragedy?
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_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

2. What are the six main components of Tragedy and, according to Aristotle, which is
the most important one?
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
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3.2 Chapter VII: Tragic Plot: Completeness and Magnitude

Tragedy has been defined by Aristotle as an imitation of action that is “complete” and of a
“certain magnitude”. Hence, in this chapter Aristotle gives a description of completeness and
magnitude in a Tragedy.
According to him, Completeness or “complete” means an action which has a proper
beginning, middle, and an end. The proper beginning to him is which is just like sowing a
seed, that is, an action which doesn’t follow but is a throttle that would lead to unfolding of
various other incidents. Middle is the outcome of the beginning and a catalyst that will
towards the end. The end is a final action which will complete the plot. The end binds all the
actions together and leaves no room for any unanswered questions.
Aristotle gives the example of ‘Oedipus the King’ and highlights how there were various
possible beginnings for it, for example, the life history of the protagonist and myth associated
with Oedipus. Yet, in a Tragedy, it is not the history of a person but a single action the

31
dramatist has to focus on in order to compose a great Tragedy. Therefore, the beginning of a
Tragedy should be such that it has no link to the knowledge of the things which have
happened prior to the commencement of the first action. The end according to Aristotle has to
equally unprompted. He again gives the example of ‘Oedipus the King’ and highlights how
Sophocles does not terminate the action through death. Instead we see Oedipus abdicating the
throne and leaving Thebes to live a life of recluse to repent his actions. The end is complete
in itself, even though we know from ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ that Oedipus did have a future
after the end of ‘Oedipus the King’.
Aristotle then discusses the idea of magnitude, which according to him accords the
Tragedy its aesthetic qualities because a Tragedy might be complete yet either too small or
too big. Hence, Magnitude can be defined as the size, proportion and symmetry of any
Tragedy. According to the definition, Aristotle espouses that the length of a tragic plot should
be such that it can be apprehended by spectators so that they are able to link one event with
other easily. The length of Tragedy should meet the inner demands of the plot; this is to say
that it should show a change in the fortunes of a protagonist. For example, in ‘Oedipus the
King’ Sophocles proves the magnitude by intricately drawing the trajectory from Oedipus’s
prosperity to his humiliating fall.
Check Your Progress-2
1. How should a Tragedy begin?
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2. How long should be the length of a tragic plot?

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3.3 Chapter VIII: Tragic Plot: The Unity of Action

The idea of magnitude and completeness as described above is relevant in understanding the
concept of unity of action in a Tragedy. According to Aristotle, the unity of the plot and unity
of the tragic protagonist are completely different ideas. For example, Odysseus does not
become a unified play just because it encompasses all the major life events in the
protagonist’s life. In a Tragedy it is to be observed and followed that it is just an imitation of
a single, unified action. Inclusion of incidents which do not help in producing the desired end,
are insignificant. They make the plots episodic, and episodic have ben vehemently denounced
by Aristotle. Therefore, a tragic playwright should only include incidents which help the plot
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unfold in a sequential manner that would lead to an end which is “complete in itself”.
Nonetheless, Aristotle praises Homer as one of the greatest epic writers. Aristotle gives the
example of ‘The Iliad’ by Homer contrasting them with ‘The Heracleid’ and ‘The Theseid’
which have a unified plot. Yet, he makes clear demarcation between the plot requirement of
Epic and Tragedy.
3.4 Chapter IX: Poetry versus History
The prior discourse on the need of unity in the incidents of Tragedy is further elaborated by
highlighting ways to achieve this unity. The rule that Aristotle foregrounds to achieve the
unity is “necessity and probability” in the arrangement of events. It is in the examination of
“necessity and probability” that Aristotle throws light on the difference between the poetic
and the historical truth.”
“Necessity” has been defined as an unpremeditated relationship between the incidents of
plot. The rule necessity stated that incidents should be interrelated to each other in terms that
latter is the outcome of former. Yet, even if an incident at times is not the outcome of the
action before it, Aristotle does not denounce it, because for him, Necessity is “marvelous” or
chance element in a play, a playwright cannot be rigid about it. “Probability” is an element in
a tragic plot that makes their sequence probable or likely. This is to say, incident 2 might not
be a “necessary” outcome of incident 1. Yet, in a given situation it is the most likely outcome.
The playwright may sacrifice “necessity” where it is not possible. But, he cannot overlook
“probability”. The two concepts are essential for a tragic plot as they provide for a certain
degree of irreversibility in the pattern of events.
Aristotle along with his explanation of “necessity” and “probability” ingeniously puts
forward the difference between the historical and the poetic truth. Through this he also
establishes the identity of Poetry as a form of art that serves an important purpose, a reply to
Plato. According to Aristotle History is not governed by the rule of “necessity and
probability” like Poetry. History deals with the actual events while Poetry is an imitation of
that event. But, while history records the incidents as they happened, Poetry shares an
experience which is probable. In sharing a probable experience, Poetry then serves a greater
moral purpose by making the experience more general and universal.

Check Your Progress-3

1. How is the unity of action achieved in a tragic plot?
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3.5 Chapter X: Simple and Complex Plots

The chapter discusses the difference between two kinds of plots: simple and complex. A
simple plot is the one in which action moves in a straight line, evolving towards a tragic end.
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A complex plot, in contrast to it includes reversal of the situation, with or without the
recognition of the true situation. The only condition imposed on a complex plot is both
reversal and discovery should come from within without the interference of any external
stimuli.
3.6 Chapter XI: Peripeteia and Anagnorisis (Reversal and Discovery)
The chapter discusses in details the meaning of Peripeteia (Reversal) and Anagnorisis
(Discovery). According to the Aristotelian theory, Reversal of the situation (Peripeteia), is a
change in the course of action from one sate to its opposite just like in ‘Oedipus the King’ a
change in fortune, from happiness to misery or from adversity to prosperity. Usually in a
tragic plot the change is from happiness to adversity, it is only in comic or a happy plot that
the fortune changes from misery to happiness.
Discovery or Recognition (Anagnorisis) is interrelated to Peripeteia. In the case of
Discovery, in a tragic plot, means a sudden discovery of knowledge which brings about the
reversal in the situation. In ‘Oedipus the King’ the revelation by Corinthian shepherd leads to
Discovery of Oedipus’s true identity and in turn to reversal of the entire situation. According
to Aristotle, an ideal complex plot is the one in which the two elements, Peripeteia and
Anagnorisis are combined and given an impression of suddenness.
3.7 Chapter XII: Quantitative Parts of a Tragedy
According to Aristotle, a Tragedy consists of a prologue, episodes, choral odes and exode. A
choral ode is then further divided into two parts parode and stasimon. Prologue comes before
the entry of the chorus. It is an introductory note that provides the necessary background
information about the events, characters and themes. Episode is a form of dramatic action and
consists of activities of characters, the interaction between them, and the conversation
between chorus and characters. An episode comes between two choral odes. Chorus consists
of a group of people that sing or speak the choral ode. The odes are usually the narration of
the action which is linked to the main plot. An exode, comes after the last choral ode. Choral
ode is divided into two parts; Parode is the first undivided utterance of the chorus. Stasimon
is a choral ode without anapests or trochaic tetrameter. Aristotle also mentions one more part,
Kommos, which is a song of lamentation, sung by chorus and characters together.

Check Your Progress-4

1. What are the quantitative parts of a Tragedy?
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3.8 Chapter XIII: The Ideal Hero for a Tragic Plot

The ideal tragic hero is measured in terms of the plot, which are ‘action’ in which there is a
change from one state to its opposite and ‘tragic effect’, the catharsis of the feelings of pity

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and fear. Aristotle mentions four categories of tragic heroes. Foremost, he describes a hero
who is virtuous and just, yet falls from a state of prosperity to adversity. But, such a tragic
hero is not able to invoke the feelings of pity and fear. Second is a kind of action wherein a
tragic dramatist portrays a vicious person who rises from misery to happiness, it is highly
unsuitable for a tragic plot. The third is an action in which a vicious person meets his tragic
fate; this too is unable to arouse a feeling of pity and fear. The fourth category, according to
Aristotle is the ideal category. The tragic hero is described as someone who should be better
than the average but not perfectly virtuous or just. He falls from the state of prosperity to that
of adversity, because of his own ‘Hamartia’ or tragic error. The quintessential example of this
is, Oedipus in ‘Oedipus the King’.
3.9 Chapter XIV: Deeds Suitable for Tragedy
Structure and Spectacle: Aristotle puts forward the use of Structure and spectacle in arousing
the feelings of pity and fear in order to provide catharsis or purgation. Spectacle is the use of
stage-machinery or terrible stage pictures, in order to accessorize the incidents in the plot and
produce the feelings of pity and fear. Aristotle says that the structure of the plot should be
such that it is self-sufficient. This is to say that a Tragedy should be enjoyable even if it is
only read and not performed. The reason behind it being that the Greek Tragedy that Aristotle
based his theoretical premise on did not showcase the cruelty or violence on stage. For
example, the most tragic deeds in ‘Oedipus the King’ like suicide of Jocasta and Oedipus’
self-blinding were narrated and not performed.
Tragic Deeds: According to Aristotle there are three kinds of tragic deeds: a) Enemies
killing each other, b) strangers killing each other or, c) two close friends or blood relations
committing the tragic deed. Aristotle stresses that the ideal tragic deed is the case of hostility
amongst friends or blood relations. The word deed is that in which a person, fully conscious,
contemplates a deed of cruelty but leaves it undone either due to fear or any other reason.
Aristotle divides Tragic Deeds into three categories on the basis of just contemplation and
execution after contemplation. The first category is where the character consciously
contemplates and commits the deed. The second category is in which the character commits
the deed in ignorance of the facts. The third category is in which the character contemplates
to commit the deed in ignorance of the facts but does not because of the discovery of the true
identity of the victim. The third category is considered to be ideal by Aristotle.
Check Your Progress-5
1. Who is an ideal tragic hero?
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 2. What are the three different kinds of tragic deeds?
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3.10 Chapter XV: Characterization

The chapter provides an organized view of the types of tragic protagonist and the ‘right’
portrayal of them by a playwright. He foregrounds four rules; a) Characters of a tragedy
should be good, to some degree, b) realistic, c) he should have consistency, d) and
appropriateness.
‘According to Aristotle the goodness of a tragic protagonists that he is ‘noble’ but not
morally excellent, similarly he is ‘just’ but not perfectly so. The characteristics of the
characters of a tragedy should ‘add grandeur’ to a plot. A tragic protagonist should be
relatable, and this is what Aristotle means by it being ‘realistic’. So, that the play serves its
purpose of providing purgation. The character of a tragic plot should represent its character
through his countenance. The last rule by Aristotle in elaboration states that the character
traits should remain consistent of a tragic protagonist. The character should be depicted in the
same way a painter makes portraits.
3.11 Chapter XVI: Kinds of Discovery
The chapter discusses the means by which discovery becomes possible. The first one is,
‘signs or tokens’ with the help of which identity of one person is revealed to another. The
method has been kept at the bottom of hierarchy foregrounded by Aristotle in terms of its
aesthetic appeal. The reason is that it is not reliable. The second kind of discovery is when the
playwright reveals the truth in order to ‘solve some problem’ of the plot. According to
Aristotle, this kind of discovery pays no heed to the rules of necessity and probability. The
third kind of discovery is considered to be superior to the above two mentioned, because it
has some relevance to the plot line. It is recognition or discovery due to character’s ‘sudden
remembering’ of something.
The fourth and fifth types of ‘discovery’ as deployed by the playwright are based on
reasoning. The recognition seeps in through the process of reasoning in the former, and in
latter is brought about by false reasoning. The best kind of discovery, according to Aristotle
is the sixth, where the incidents of the plot lead to self- discovery. As is the case in ‘Oedipus
Rex’ by Sophocles, Oedipus discovers his true identity through the gradual unfolding of the
plot. This kind of discovery abides by the rules of probability and necessity, which are of
utmost importance in any Tragedy.

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Check Your Progress-6
1. What are the four rules of characterization?
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2. What are the five kinds of discovery?

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3.12 Chapter XVII: The Process of Composing Tragedies

The chapter highlights the rules of composing Tragedies. The first rule is ‘Visualizing the
incidents’ in such a way that they are an exact representation of the incidents. The spectator
should be able to easily understand the actions through the appropriate employment of
pictorial representation. The second rule according to Aristotle is, ‘Language and Gestures’; a
playwright should delineate his characters in such a way that they give a psychological
insight through their gestures and language. The language and gesture should portray the
circumstances accurately to create convincing characters. The third rule of Aristotle is that
the plot of a Tragedy should be ‘Universal’ in their form. In order to do this, playwright
should thoughtfully construct the outline of the plot. The characterization, language, stage
props so on and so forth should be in consistence with plot development.
3.13 Chapter XXIII: Epic and Tragedy
The chapter contrasts and compares between Epic and Tragedy, in terms of action and plot.
According to Aristotle, an Epic narrative should also be dealt in the same way as a Tragedy.
Epic writers instead of using a single meter should follow the dramatic manner in the mixing
of meters, just like Homer. An Epic too should have a single action or unified action without
intermixing of various events. Although, the Epic follows the trajectory of history yet, unlike
history, it is not concerned with the whole period. Hence, an Epic writer should confine its
portrayal of actions. Aristotle gives the example of Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ where he has
confined the action of his Epic to a limited portion of the war, highlighting the fall of Troy.
The unity of Epic might differ from that of Tragedy, because in an Epic digression are
allowed if they accessorize the plot.
3.14 Chapter XXIV: Epic and Tragedy
The chapter continues in the line of tenor regarding Epic and Tragedy. Aristotle says, while
there might be similarities of the plot requirements like the need for plot reversal, for example
Discovery. Aristotle gives the example of Homer’s the ‘Iliad’ which is full of pathos and
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‘Odyssey’ as being complex with precisely delineated character’s to enhance the plotline.
Epic and Tragedy differ in its meter and its length. He applauds the work of Homer who only
imitated the narration and gave his characters the space to dramatize the action. But, still an
Epic is the improbable or irrational upon which the marvelous is placed. Also, the absurdity
of presenting several actions together on stage passes unnoticed in Epic poetry. According to
Aristotle, a Tragedy should always prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.
The tragic plot should not comprise of irrational parts, as well as should employ its meters, be
it iambic or trochaic tetrameters with utmost skillfulness.
3.15 Chapter XXVI: Which is Superior; Epic or Tragedy?
According to Aristotle, Tragedy is far more superior to Epic because a Tragedy comprises of
all the formative elements of the Epic and has two more; song and spectacle. Hence, a
Tragedy is far more engrossing. He also responds to the traditional criticism of Tragedy that
has deemed it to be of lower form because the effect of Tragedy is solely dependent on its
performance. Aristotle says that Epic too can lose the magnificence in its recital, even though
it is not dependent on the performance.
Check Your Progress-7
1. What are the differences between Epic and Tragedy?
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4. Themes
4.1 The Metaphysical and Ethical Contexts of the ‘Poetics’
Aristotle doesn’t seem to embrace the idea of poetical autonomy. Instead, we see him
defending poetry as a part of “productive” sciences. Poetry too according to him served a
moral and social function, a rational pursuit. The ‘Poetics’ is a theoretical exposition on the
nature and function of poetry as well as a strong critique of Plato’s view regarding poetry.
Hence, it becomes important to analyze the Metaphysical and Ethical context of ‘Poetics’.
‘Poetics’ in describing the subtleties of a Tragedy, characters, plot, action, epic and so on
and so forth, also rejects the bland utilitarianism espoused by Plato’s ‘Republic’. Aristotle
seems to reject the constant demand for the usefulness of a pursuit as not being relevant to the
broader vision. Although, he does oppose the confined view of mechanical utilitarianism, yet
he insists that art is useful only if it helps in developing the attributes of a person. He states
that there should be a natural connection between the pleasure derived from art and the virtue
nspired by it.

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 The Metaphysical characteristics in a Tragedy according to Aristotle are notions of unity,
possibility, rationality, necessity, universality. These derive from his metaphysical principles
of, teleology of both individual and state, the principle of moderation, acceptance of plurality
and empirical method. In order for the art work to serve a productive purpose it should abide
by these rules.
4.2 Imitation and Action
Aristotle believes art as being a mode of imitation. But his view of imitation is different from
that of Plato. He sees imitation as a basic human instinct and allows it to be a source toward
truth and knowledge. Imitation is also a source of pleasure along with learning. Aristotle
places high priority on action. According to him, action should have a moral end or purpose.
4.3 The Concept of Imitation
Aristotle states that the origin of art lies in imitation. According to him, imitation is a
formalization of impulses, a rational development of instincts, unlike the view foregrounded
by Plato that a Poet is divinely possessed. The actions imitated should be of moral
significance. But, the portrayal of a human being should vary from the norm, as in the case of
Tragedy or Comedy, because the mechanical moral realism is for the discipline of History.
4.4 The Concept of Action.
According to Aristotle, Tragedy is essentially dramatic. A Tragedy must be based on a certain
structure of events to which the actions of characters in the play contribute. The action must
take place within a complex network of human relationship because individuals do not act in
isolation. A Tragedy should represent complete action in order to arouse the feeling of pity
and fear. Action is what drives the plot to a great extent, as it is not the character a Tragedy
focuses on but the sequence of action. As an action might be uncharacteristic but might
occupy space in the sequence of cause and effect which are beyond the imagination of mere
mortals.
Check Your Progress-8
1. What, according to Aristotle, are the metaphysical characteristics of a Tragedy?
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Things to Remember:
1. The idea of Tragedy as defined by Aristotle (unit 3.1)
2. The various types of tragic plot and characters (unit 3.2/ 3.3)
3. Tragic flaw, Discovery, Recognition, Catharsis and their representation (unit 3.8-3.11)
4. Epic and Tragedy (unit 3.13-3.15)

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 Unit-5(c)

Sappho
Shruti Sareen

Learning Objectives
 To be able to understand the two poems in the syllabus
 To be able to interpret the poems in the light of our knowledge about Sappho’s life
and ancient Greece

Introduction
Personal Life
Sappho is believed to have lived in Greece in the town of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in
the 6th Century BC. She is believed to have had three brothers, out of which one brother is
known to have spent a lot of money flirting with a courtesan (prostitute, veshya, randi). He
later joined the pirates in the sea. Sappho did not approve of his actions. It is believed that her
mother was called Cleis, and her daughter was named Cleis also, after her grandmother.
Sappho’s father’s name is widely believed to be Scamandronymous, after a famous river,
Scamander. Sappho is known to have married a rich man called Cercylas or Cercolas from
one of the neighbouring islands. It is believed that Sappho’s family was wealthy and
influential because of several reasons: her father was named after a famous river, her brother
spent a lot of money on the courtesan, and she married a very rich man. Her family was also
important enough to have been sent to exile—they went to Sicily during the time of their
banishment / exile. It is also believed that another brother of hers had the opportunity of
pouring wine during a ceremony. As this was an honour given only to the nobility, it again
shows that Sappho’s family was probably from the wealthy aristocracy. She had many
lovers—men as well as women—and it is believed that perhaps she died because of
committing suicide because of unrequited love. However, this could be a myth and may not
be a fact.

Professional Life
She is known to have had a circle of students around her, to whom she taught poetry, music,
and various things to prepare them to be brides, wives and mothers. She is known to have
been the best woman-poet and even great philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle held
her wisdom, knowledge and art in great respect. She was so famous that her name, face and
verses are inscribed on many ancient Greek vases. So she is a poet par excellence, and she is
known to be a kind of school-mistress. Some scholars also believe her to have been a kind of
priestess to the Gods. However, others say that she just took part in the usual prayers and
ceremonies just like other women in Greece at that time did, and that some of her poems were
odes and tributes to goddesses like Aphrodite, which may give rise to the idea that she could
be a priestess. The subjects of her poems / songs were usually love, festivals, and religious
ceremonies—which also makes it seem that she came from a rich, aristocratic family as her
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poems are not about ordinary daily activities such as cooking, weaving etc. On one hand, she
was very respected as a wise woman, poet and teacher. On the other hand however, she was
mocked and ridiculed for having so many lovers—men as well as women. Sappho’s poems
were more like songs and were sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, which is a musical
instrument. She made her own new techniques in terms of musical instruments, ways of
playing them, metre of the poems etc. (metre—number of syllables in one line)
Sources
It is extremely difficult to actually know and be sure about Sappho’s life. A lot of information
is available from the 4th century BC, which is about two hundred years after Sappho’s time.
During the 4th century BC, a lot of Greek comedy was common, and the comedies have
distorted information about Sappho through their satires, caricatures, melodrama and
sensationalism. So we do not know if everything is true or not. Very few of Sappho’s poems
have survived whole, most have some parts missing, and thus it is difficult to get full
information out of them. Some information is from what Sappho herself has written, some
from what other writers and philosophers have written about her. Moreover, these sources are
in Greek, so they have to be translated and always the meaning is not clear. Sappho uses the
personal pronoun “I” in her poems. However, we cannot be sure if it refers to the poet herself
or to a fictional narrator. Sometimes, the same person is called by many different names in
different places. All this has complicated the reliability and veracity of information we have
about Sappho. Songs are oral. Of course Sappho has also written her fragments, but oral
songs and stories get lost as they cannot be stored, unlike the written form. Thus, it is very
difficult for us to actually know the details of Sappho’s life.
Lyric Poetry in Ancient Greece
The Ancient Greeks considered poetry a much higher form of art than prose. There were
various types of poetry: 1.) epic poetry, 2.) philosophical poetry, 3.) elegiac poetry, 4.) choral
poetry, 5.) lyric poetry, and 6.) pastoral poetry. Lyric poetry in Greece was at its highest from
the 7th to the 5th Century BC. Sappho lived during the latter half of the 7th century and the
beginning of the 6th century BC. Later, when drama came, the comedies and tragedies were
also considered as poetry, not as prose. Epic poetry is like telling a long story about heroic
figures in verse such as Homer, pastoral poetry deals with nature and rural scenes. Elegies are
poems written for the dead. The Greeks had many different dialects of the language and
poetry was written in these different dialects. A dialect is a local form of the standard
language. For example, Haryanvi Hindi or Punjabi Hindi can be seen as dialects of Hindi.
The language used for generally speaking in Greece was very different from the complex,
styled literary language that was used for poetry. The two poets from the island of Lesbos,
Sappho and Alcaeus, wrote in a different and more complex language from the other Greeks.
At its height, there were a total of nine most famous lyric poets from Greece. Sappho and
Alcaeus were two of them. Lyric poetry is called lyric because it was usually sung as songs,
accompanied by the musical string instrument, the lyre. (Lyra) Lyric poetry is also known as
melic poetry. It can also be sung without an instrument. It has its own specific metre. Metre is
the number of syllables in each line. Lyric poetry can be choral or solo. Hymns in churches
are also an example of lyric poetry. Choral poetry means it is sung by a group or chorus, for

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example, at religious ceremonies, weddings, festivals, symposium (wine-drinking party) and
so on. They also celebrate victories in athletics and war. Solo lyric poetry, on the other hand,
is more personal and is sung alone by one individual. It deals with emotions, feelings,
thoughts, and love poetry plays a major role in this. Sappho’s poetry is both monadic and
choral. A solo song is known as a monody. However, we have also seen that she has many
songs as tributes to goddesses and deities and that she used to sing for festivals. Lyric poems
are fairly short poems, as compared to epics and dramas. Lyric poetry is written with the first-
person ‘I’ pronoun. However, we cannot be sure if it is the poet speaking or whether there is a
fictional narrator. Similarly, in Sappho’s case, though scholars have tried to find her
biography through her poetry, we actually do not know if the first-person “I” in the poems
refers to Sappho or to a fictional narrator. These poems were actually written as songs and
were accompanied by the musical instrument, lyre. Thus, they have a lot of musicality, and
repetition of sounds in the original. There is an incantatory effect which has its own charm
and which seduces as just as much as Sappho does, or Aphrodite does. However, we can only
read Sappho’s Greek fragments after they have been translated into English, and it is hard to
translate them in such a way that the sounds, repetitions, beats and rhythm of poetry remains
the same even in a different language as it is in the original.
Fragment-1
On The Throne of Many Hues, Immortal Aphrodite: Critical Analysis
Sappho is by and large known as a lyric poet which means her poetry usually has personal
themes. Epic poetry, on the other hand, is public and deals with society and the world, instead
of with personal emotion. However, Sappho mixes elements of epic poetry as well with lyric
poetry. Sappho speaks of a personal subject, love, but the ways in which she does this are
public in the sense that the style she adopts and the imagery she uses are often taken from
epic poetry. She also talks about it very openly the way we talk about public things and
events. For example, she begins the poem with an invocation to Aphrodite, the Greek
goddess of love. Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus, who is the king of all the gods. “Immortal
Aphrodite”, “weaver of wiles”, “child of Zeus”, “O Blessed Goddess”, this is how Sappho
addresses or invokes the goddess Aphrodite. Beginning with an invocation to the gods is an
epic tradition. Other epic themes or tropes in the poem may be hinted at for example war
which is suggested by the fact that Aphrodite comes down to Sappho on a chariot, usually a
vehicle for warriors. However, the difference is that Sappho’s Aphrodite comes on a chariot
led by sparrows. Sparrows are very ordinary, commonplace birds, and not the usual birds
who lead chariots. Swans and peacocks are seen as more royal birds who would drive the
chariot for a goddess. However, Sappho has chosen sparrows as symbols of sexual fertility,
fecundity and procreation, thus making them appropriate bearers of the love goddess’s
chariot.
Most of the poem deals with a past incident and is in flashback. It is about how
Aphrodite has come and helped Sappho earlier on so many occasions. Sappho pleads with her
to come and help her now as well. She reminds Aphrodite how she came earlier when Sappho
called her for help, on her golden chariot led by sparrows, leaving her father’s house. It seems
that Aphrodite has helped Sappho many times earlier if someone whom Sappho loves does
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not love her back or has wronged her. Aphrodite is like Sappho’s ally or friend in such
matters and does whatever Sappho wants. Aphrodite has, on earlier occasions told Sappho
that whoever flees or runs away from her will soon run after her, whoever doesn’t love her
will soon start loving her. The whole poem is in flashback. This is a very typical technique of
ancient Greece. Only in the last stanza, does it come back to the present when Sappho
entreats Aphrodite to come to her and help her as she has on earlier occasions.
This is a very personal poem even though the goddess is invoked and some epic
traditions can be seen because Aphrodite calls Sappho by her name. The relation Sappho has
with the goddess seems to be intimate and there is no hierarchy, Aphrodite is her friend and
ally. The last few lines repeat what the invocation says in the beginning, which is a
characteristic of music. Sappho’s poems are actually songs which were sung to the
accompaniment of a lyre, a musical instrument. Sappho invokes Aphrodite in many of her
poems. It seems the goddess was worshipped on the island of Lesbos, though we cannot say
if Sappho was officially a priestess or not. Aphrodite’s descent from heaven can be seen as
love descending down to the earth which yearns and desires, like rain falling on the earth to
make the soil fertile and help trees and plants to grow. This is all the work of the goddess
Aphrodite, to make the earth bear fruits and flowers. Sappho too, like the earth, yearns for
love. Perhaps we can say that this is a conversation that Sappho had with the goddess in a
dream. There definitely seems to be a personal, emotional connection like that of a friend
which Sappho shares with the goddess. Sappho asks Aphrodite to be her friend and ally.
Aphrodite is known as a “weaver of wiles”. In another translation, she is called “Aphrodite of
the spangled mind”. Aphrodite can defeat all the gods, even Zeus, the king of the gods,
because her weapon is not war. Her weapon is soft persuasion, seduction, temptation,
cajoling, playing on emotions. In some sense, Sappho is the same. She is a lover who tries to
win love from other women or men through charms, attraction and influence.
We may also perhaps see Aphrodite as a reflective part of Sappho’s own personality,
which stands aside and views her own passionate and desiring self with some degree of
detachment. Aphrodite symbolises the wisdom which Sappho gives to herself: that loves have
come and gone before, and will again, and that particular loves for specific people are
transient and temporary like the leaves, and only Love, the emotion itself, is deathless and
golden.
Fragment-16
Some Say an Army of Horsemen: Critical Analysis
This poem too begins with epic like qualities. It begins with a catalogue of army of horsemen,
foot soldiers, ships. This is in keeping with the traditions of epic poetry. Moreover, again the
reference to war is epic-like as wars are typical features of epics. The first few lines of the
poem also show repetition, each beginning with “Some say…”. This incantatory effect has a
spellbinding, hypnotising effect on the reader, much like Aphrodite and Helen themselves
have. Sappho has a similar effect.
In ancient Greek society, war is considered as the most desirable, heroic thing for men,
whereas for women, it is love. Sappho refers to mythology here. In Homer’s epic Iliad, Helen

43
is the wife of Menelaus. Helen is the most beautiful human being on earth, and Menelaus is
the best husband. Actually, there is a wedding among the god to which one goddess Eris, is
not invited. This enrages her and she brings a golden apple and says that whoever is the most
beautiful will get the apple. Zeus, the King of the gods, tells a mortal man, Paris of Troy, to
judge who is the most beautiful between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite as all three claim to be
most beautiful. Paris is famous for being a very fair person. As Paris begins to judge the
contest, all three goddesses try to bribe him. Hera promises to make him the king of Europa
and Asia, Athena, goddess of war, says she will give him the skills to win every war, and
Aphrodite, goddess of love, says she will give him the most beautiful human being on earth,
Helen. Helen is the wife of the Greek king Menelaus, in Sparta. Paris takes Helen from her
bedroom to Troy. Menelaus starts a war to try and get Helen back. This is the Trojan war.
This myth is also called The Judgement of Paris.
In Sappho’s poem, the Homeric myth is changed. Here, Helen is the one who chooses
Paris, not the other way round. This shifts the agency from the man, Paris, to the woman,
Helen. Helen is made to fall in love with Paris by the love goddess Aphrodite. Helen who is
the most beautiful human herself, for the love of Paris, leaves the best husband, her child and
her dear parents. This illustrates what Sappho writes in the first stanza of the poem, that “it is
what one loves” is the most beautiful thing on the black earth instead of war and army.
Sappho tries to change the masculine perspective into a feminine perspective. Helen went
with Paris, that is why the Trojan war happened. So, in some sense, if the most beautiful
thing on earth is what one loves, then Helen desires Paris, rather than the war Menelaus
fought to get her back. Here again of course, it is important to remember that Sappho shifts
the agency from Paris to Helen, Sappho’s Helen has agency which Homer’s Helen does not.
Homer’s Helen is the typical silenced and objectified woman which we see in masculine
patriarchal writings.
Now in the fourth stanza, Sappho links her own context and situation with this myth.
Sappho has agency and desires Anactoria, just as she gives agency to Helen to desire Paris.
Thus she gives a feminist twist to the myth of the Judgement of Paris. It seems that Anactoria
is a young woman whom Sappho desires. But Anactoria is not here. Sappho does not say this
explicitly, but it is implied that Anactoria is perhaps with someone else whom she loves or
desires. This leaves Sappho in the same position as Menelaus in the myth of the Trojan war.
Helen has gone off with Paris, and so Sappho wonders if Anactoria too has gone off with
someone else. However, Helen was married to Menelaus. Does this then mean that Sappho
sees herself as wedded to Anactoria, with the same commitment and sense of “ownership” as
in a marriage? Does Sappho feel that Anactoria rightfully belongs to her?
However, in the last stanza, Sappho again asserts what she said in the first one (we
discussed this with respect to the previous poem also), that a glance of what she loves, the
face, the walk, the eyes of the beautiful Anactoria has more charms than all the war-chariots
and foot-soldiers. Now, if we see Sappho in the position of Menelaus, and if we remember
that Menelaus started the war to get Helen back, we see Sappho doing no such thing. She
loves Anactoria more than she loves war. In other words, it seems, that even if Anactoria has
gone to someone else, however much Sappho loves or desires her, she cannot (becaushe she
doesn’t have power and armies like Menelaus), but moreover, also that she chooses not to
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start a war to get Anactoria back. In this sense, the poem again shows us things from the
viewpoint of a woman, a feminist standpoint. Relationships between women are shown to
have function by the kind of power and dominance with which relationships among men
function. Women-women relationships are here shown to be characterised by mutual respect
and love. However, now we understand why armies and chariots can be useful in the first
place: to get back what ones loves. However, a feminine logic operates within the poem
instead of a masculine logic. As explained in the previous poem, Aphrodite is known as a
“weaver of wiles”. In another translation, she is called “Aphrodite of the spangled mind”.
Aphrodite can defeat all the gods, even Zeus, the king of the gods, because her weapon is not
war. Her weapon is soft persuasion, seduction, temptation, cajoling, playing on emotions. In
some sense, Sappho is the same. She is a lover who tries to win love from other women or
men through charms, attraction and influence. So Aphrodite, a female goddess has the power
to win over all the male gods without using weapons of war. Like Aphrodite, Sappho too uses
soft, cunning means like persuasion, temptation and seduction to get what she wants.
Sappho’s Social Context: Women and Sexuality in Ancient Greece
It is difficult to get reliable information about Ancient Greece simply because very few
records have been preserved since antiquity. Sappho wrote on papyrus which is hard to
preserve. We know her work because of what others have written about her. However, it
seems that in ancient Greece, society was segregated by gender. This means that men had
very little contact with men, and men with women, before and also after marriage. Marriage,
at that time, was not considered to be an emotional bond, but rather a social, economic and
political institution according to which inheritance of property, money and so on was
decided. Fathers chose husbands for their daughters. So most of the time, women lived with
women and men with men. Homosexuality among men was widely accepted in Greece.
Many well-known Greek male poets and philosophers had sexual relations with younger
boys. This is known as pederasty and was regarded as completely normal at that time.
However, it was totally different with women. Women having sexual relations with other
women were considered to be loose, immoral, and perverted. Women who only had relations
with men were praised. However, a lot of women did have relations with other women, even
though it was considered as negative in the patriarchal culture. In the introduction, we
discussed that Sappho was from a famous and noble family. Rich upper-class women like
Sappho were used to having sexual relations with each other. Emotional bonds were
maintained by same sex relations, as there were no emotional bonds in marriage.
Sappho is known to have sex with men as well as women. She had a husband and a
daughter named Cleis. However, she also had sexual relations with women and many of them
are believed to have been younger than her. Sometimes she also had relations with older
women. She had a close circle of women around her. It is not exactly sure what was the
purpose of this circle. They could have been friends or lovers who shared emotional (and
sexual) bonds with each other. Sometimes, it is said that Sappho taught music and dance to
these girls, and also gave them knowledge about worshipping the female goddesses, and
about sex and marriage. Sometimes, it is said that it was a purely religious group. But that
does not seem true as Sappho has written for wedding ceremonies also, and love poetry too.
But she definitely had a close circle of young women around her.
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Self Check Questions
1. What is your response towards queer sexuality (same-sex love)? What is society’s
response?
2. What was the response of ancient Greek society about queer sexuality among women?
3. How can you link the explanations of the two poems with your knowledge of Sappho
and ancient Greek society?
4. What is the role of oral and written literatures? What is the difference?
5. What is the importance of translation?

Glossary
Zeus—King of the Greek Gods on Mount Olympus
Aphrodite—Goddess of Love, daughter of Zeus
Hera—Queen of the Gods. Wife and sister of Zeus. Goddess of Marriage and Birth
Athena—Goddess of wisdom and war
Helen—most beautiful human in the world. Wife of Menelaus, who is the king of Sparta,
Greece
Paris—King of Troy
Menelaus------ King of Sparta, in Mycenae, in Greece
Anactoria------- woman whom Sappho loves
Sparta—---------- a kingdom in the province of Mycenae, Greece
Lyric Poetry------ short personal poetry about emotions usually. Sung to the accompaniment
of musical instrument, lyre. Solo and Monodic.
Choral Poetry----short public poetry or songs sung in groups during weddings, processions,
festivals, ceremonies etc
Epic Poetry------- a very long narrative story in verse form. About humans and gods. It is
public and shows the nature of the society, characteristics of a particular historical time
period etc.
Bibliography
Castle, Warren. ‘Observations on Sappho’s To Aphrodite’. Transactions and Proceedings of
the American Philological Association, Vol. 89. John Hopkins University Press. 1958.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/283665
Decker, Jessica Elbert. ‘The Most Beautiful Thing on the Black Earth: Sappho’s Alliance
with Aphrodite’. Looking at Beauty to Kalon in Western Greece: Selected Essays from the
2018 Symposium on the Heritage of Western Greece. Heather L. Reid and Tony Leyh Ed.
Parnassos Press: Fonte Aretusa. 2019. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxpn5.6>

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Dodson-Robinson, Eric. ‘Helen’s Judgement of Paris and Greek Marriage Ritual in Sappho
16’ . Arethusa, Vol. 43, No. 1. The John Hopkins University Press. Winter 2010. <
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44578316>
duBois, Page. ‘Sappho and Helen’. Arethusa, Vol. 11, No. 1/2, WOMEN IN THE ANCIENT
WORLD. The John Hopkins University Press. Spring and Fall 1978. <
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26308155>
Hallett, Judith P.. ‘Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality’. Signs Vol 4 No.3.
University of Chicago Press. 1979. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173393>
Kivilo, Maarit. ‘Sappho’, Early Greek Poets’ Lives: The Shaping of the Tradition. Brill.
2010. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbgkd.11.
Perry, E.D.. ‘Greek Literature’. The Classical Weekly, Vol. 5, No. 23, The John Hopkins
University Press. Apr.1912. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4386575
Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard. ‘Shifting Helen: An Interpretation of Sappho Fragment 16’, The
Classical Quarterly, Vol 50 No.1. Cambridge University Press. 2000. <
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1558930>
Prentice, William K. ‘Sappho’. Classical Philology Vol. 13 No.4 (Oct 1918). The University
of Chicago Press. 347-360. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/262942>

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 Unit-5(d)

Ars Poetica
Horace
Sambuddha Jash

1.1 Introduction
Ars Poetica, which in English means ‘Art of Poetry’ is a poetic treatise composed by Horace
sometime between 19–18 BC for the Piso family who were his patrons for some time. The
original version had been titled as Epistula ad Pisones or Epistle to the Pisos. Ars Poetica
derives some of its compositional elements from Aristotle as he discusses the importance of
poetry and how good poetry can be written. It is also different from Aristotle’s work as
Horace dealt with genres like lyric, satires, elegy, and odes while Aristotle’s work was
mainly concerned with epic, tragedy and comedy. Aristotle had given the maximum
importance to tragedy while Horace discusses poetry as a genre with distinct qualities. Both
Aristotle and Horace had given due importance to decorum in their works, so as we can see
that Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars Poetica are similar to each other but have
significant departure points. Originally written in verse, the way a poem is written, Ars
Poetica consists of 476 lines containing nearly 30 maxims for young poets. It was composed
following a conversational method – a method where an elderly person provides advice to
young people through his experiences of the world and literature.
Ars Poetica’s English translation has been done in the form of prose and is designed as
an Epistle or a letter where Horace is seen giving advice to the two young boys of the Piso
family and magnificently explains to them the steps of composing great poetry. It was
composed using the hexameter pattern. Through Horace’s witty lines that also reflect irony he
uses poetry as a symbol to deliver the important lessons of life to the young boys. Through
his knowledge he displays the fact that just like poetry is a gradual development of a creative
genre, so is life where every step has to be taken by carefully assessing both positive and
negative aspects of it. At the outset Horace upholds the virtue of truth for the young boys of
the Piso family by dismissing his contemporary tendency of not speaking the truth in front of
their patrons with the worry to displease them. Ars Poetica has been an influential treatise
where Horace successfully displays the importance of creative truth, decorum and harmony
by blending them with the virtues of living an exemplary life. The work was a prized instance
for the Neoclassicists of the 17th and 18th centuries not only for the standards it set but also
for its humour, common sense, and appeal to the educated taste of the elites. Poets like John
Dryden and Alexander Pope often provided instances from Ars Poetica as a sort of Bible for
poetic excellence. The work served as a bench mark for future poetic creation and also
criticism about poetry’s various components – just the way Aristotle’s Poetics was
instrumental in driving all future dramatic conventions.

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1.2 Learning Objectives
The objective of this Unit is to analyze the importance of Ars Poetica written by Horace. This
has been done through a close reading of the text and critical engagement with its major
themes. The backdrop within which Ars Poetica was composed has been seen as an important
juncture of Latin writings. Close textual evaluation provides us knowledge of its
contemporary relevance within Latin culture, social conventions and above all the importance
of poetry as a creative genre. Ars Poetica like all literary genres speaks about the
contemporary society in general and the sensibility of the people. After going through this
lesson the students will be able to:
i) Have a better understanding of the text of Ars Poetica
ii) Get a knowledge of the main themes within the text
iii) Get a knowledge about the importance of poetry as a literary medium
iv) Understand the importance and contribution of Ars Poetica in the modern times

1.2.1 About the Author

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC) widely known as
Horace was a lyric poet and satirist. Along with Virgil he was regarded as an integral part of
the Roman Emperor Augustus Caeser’s court. He is known for his Odes, Epodes, Satires,
Epistles and his philosophical tract on poetry titled Ars Poetica. Horace had also served as an
officer in the republican army where he had befriended Augustus Caeser’s right-hand man in
civil affairs, Maecenas and became a spokesman of the court matters.
He composed hexameter verses through his Epistles and Satires and caustic iambic poetry
though his Epodes. His creative life gradually grew alongside the transformative growth of
Rome from a republic to an empire.
1.3 Summary
Horace begins Ars Poetica by describing the importance of two constitutive elements within
poetry – proportion and diction or the choice of words. Explaining the importance of the first
element to the two young boys of the Piso family, Horace says that if a woman’s neck is
provided to the picture of a horse it would be funny and absurd at the same time. So it is
important to be proportionate while creating any work of art by not placing serpents along
with birds or lambs along with tigers. The second element of diction is also equally important
as it is the words that live forever and not their creators, so one needs to be delicate and
careful while choosing words for poetic composition. The importance of diction or choice of
selecting words is emphasized with the author’s advice to preserve their poetry inside a closet
for nine years before giving it a public appearance. This would provide consistency to their
work and the movement of the lines would be parallel as it could reflect all the changes that
takes place within that time period.

49
 Horace then moves to discuss the role of a critic and how poets can benefit themselves
through good criticism. He compares critics to whetstones against whom the new poets can
sharpen their works. The purpose of a critic is to provide healthy and positive criticism so
that the creative outputs of the poets can be maximized. Within this discussion Horace also
stresses the importance of importance of decorum – where the critic has to severely condemn
the use of negative elements that may be present within poetry. He exemplifies this fact
through the character of Achilles who has to be represented as fiery and brave; someone who
is devoid of any negative aspects. If Achilles is portrayed in a different manner it would be a
breach of decorum and it is the critic’s work to discourage such a tendency amongst young
budding poets. Horace also attacks poets by saying that mixing genres by infusing comic
elements within the general tragic tone of poetry or vice versa is a negative aspect of
creativity and poets should avoid doing that. For him each genre should have a unique mode
of progression – that should be unbroken with unity of action and the integrity of the
characters. Horace further points out that each genre should follow a distinct meter within
which the compositional variety could be reflected and all aspects of it should come out in a
proportionate manner. This practice would set a literary precedent for the future poets and
help them to create great poetry. Making a comparison between poetry and painting the
author says that as some paintings are best viewed from a distance, some are best viewed in
light or darkness – poetry should also have a similar function – some should be enjoyed from
a distance while some others’ essence would be in a very close reading of it. Poetry true aim
should be to teach and appeal the senses at the same time as the true poet is someone who is
an inspired craftsman.
Besides an elaborate list of advices of what constitutes good poetry, Horace also makes
relevant observations within the field of dramatic criticism. He says that plays should always
begin in media res (in the middle of things) and they should consist of five Acts. The choral
and chorus song should be introduced according to the change of action within the play and
the play should never end with the introduction of deus ex machina. Similar to Aristotle,
Horace suggested that a play should always move forward with an organic unity where the
course of action and the role of the characters should be in one direction leading to a
consolidated conclusion. Each part of the narrative should have a connection with what
unfolds gradually within the play.
In the final section, Horace reminds the young boys of the Piso family as a wise counsel
that a poet often needs to please a vulgar or negative crowd but he should never compromise
on the aspect of artistic truth and always stand by it. A poet is a person who restores balance
amongst the humans and therefore must always adhere to the moral rules of the universe. He
ends my remarking that poets need to earn fortune for a living but they should always keep in
mind that they belong to the oracle of divinity and never allow themselves to be carried over
by material gains. Their acknowledgment might come late but will come for sure if they
adhere to the advice that is being given to them. The poet for Horace is a civilizer who has
the potential of keeping the standards of humanity intact.

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1.3.1 Themes
Art of Composition: The major theme about which Horace discusses in detail is the source
of good poetry and how to compose the best of them. As a wise person he offers his
reflection to the young minds and suggests possible sources and their accumulation so that
their poetry could become immortal. Along with this he describes the standards of composing
a play and what things should be followed when the play is acted on the stage. Horace
describes the importance of chorus and the junctures where they need to be introduced while
a play is being staged. He further asks creators of plays to refrain themselves from mixing the
two genres of tragedy and comedy. Returning back to the genre of poetry Horace advises the
young boys of the Piso family to never believe in flattery of the critics, instead create their
own benchmarks that would help them in excelling over their limitations. Adhering to
standards, Horace observes that the iambic meter is the most suitable for any composition as
it carries with itself the true spirit of conversation. Ars Poetica central concern of the art of
composition – be it about poetry or drama is a classic example of how a work can pave the
way for future generations to come. Through the art of composition Horace also teaches the
boys the art of living a life – a life of decorum and correct proportion.
Rules of the Stage: The second important theme of Horace’s Ars Poeticais related to
stagecraft and compositions of plays. His ideas of performance and the necessary constituents
are largely related to the ideas of Aristotle that had been expressed in Poetics. Since Horace
had composed Ars Poetica at a time of Roman history when plays were the only available
medium of knowledge and entertainment so it was important for him to advise young
composers about what should be there and what things should never be included while plays
were being written. Horace’s indebtedness to Aristotle is expressed with the fact that he
suggests the young boys to draw their plots from older Greek legends – a tradition that
Horace always upholds within his writings. He also speaks about consistency of plot and
characters as he writes:
‘If your bold muse dare tread unbeaten baths,
And bring new characters on the stage
Be sure you kept them upto your first height’
In relation to plot and characters Horace stresses on the fact that the plot should be
interconnected and there should be proper divisions between the beginning, middle and the
end. The characters should also have an integral connection with their history – for instance if
Achilles is depicted on the stage he should be shown as brave and fiery. Medea should also
be shown as defiant and untamed, just the ways she has been represented by her creator.
Horace provides a future stage oriented frame to the theories proposed by Aristotle.

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1.3.2 Check Your Progress
Answer the following:
i) Why does Horace advise that poetry should be preserved for nine years before its final
publication?
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ii) Why is it important to represent characters on the stage just the way they have been
shown by the in the books? Explain with Horace’s views on this.
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iii) Describe some of the essential features that Horace thinks should be followed by
every dramatist while composing plays.
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1.4 Glossary
Achilles: He is known as the greatest Greek warrior who fought in the Trojan War and
defeated Hector
Backdrop: The background of an event or phenomenon
Bacchus: Related to Classical mythology, known as the God of wine and pleasure
Cyclops: Related to Classical mythology, the belong to the family of Giants with one
rounded eye located at the forehead
Decorum: Something that describes a standard – in speech, behavior, dress and other human
aspects
Delphi: An ancient city located in the central part of Greece
Epoch: A particular period of time
Priam: The King of Troy
Pythias: She was a Greek biologist
Unprecedented: Something that did not happen or experienced earlier
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1.4.1 Concluding Remarks
Ars Poetica was not only an addition to a great Classical tradition, it was the beginning of a
new tradition too. The ideals of composition and creative genius were explained by Horace in
Ars Poetica in an unprecedented manner. Alexander Pope, the famous English poet had
remarked ‘Horace still charms with graceful negligence, and without method talks us into
sense’. Besides Ars Poetica being an epoch in classical learning that set the standards high for
future literary creations, the different axioms or phrases used in the text are relevant in the
contemporary times. That title hints at the universal status of this didactic poem as a pre-
eminent, authoritative and, in every sense, ‘classical’ manual on the composition of poetry.
The Ars provided an object of imitation, as well as a code of practice, for Renaissance poets
and playwrights; it continued to be the most outstanding creative instance for neo-classical
literature and aesthetics; and even some modernist writers of the twentieth century responded,
or else owed something, to its prescriptions. While the Ars Poetica is clearly far more than a
versified technical treatise, it would be wrong to give the impression that its main appeal lies
in an abundance of clever flourishes. C.O. Brink has characterised the Arsas ‘a work of the
imagination that makes a poetic symbol out of literary theory’ and enjoins readers of the
work to make sense of that theory.9 The poem contains much astute observation that can be
appreciated by today’s readers for insight not only on ancient thinking but also on ideas about
literary expression which have broader significance. For example at 93-7, having made a
prescriptive distinction between the comic and tragic styles (‘everything must keep
appropriately to the place it is alloted’ 92), Horace concedes that characters in comedy may
sometimes speak with more elevated eloquence and, conversely, that characters in a tragedy
can occasionally move the spectator more directly by using the prosaic language of everyday
life. This flexibility makes sense in terms of modern thinking (and even some postmodern
thinking) about genre: its ‘rules’ are certainly there, but those rules are there to be broken.
Phrases like in medias res, purpureuspannus (which means ‘purple patch’),
uctpicturapoesis (which means ‘as picture, so poetry’), bonus dormitat Homerus (which
means ‘the good Homer nods’) have entered the parlance of modern criticism and are often
used to describe particular event and phenomena. Notable critic and author M. A. R. Habib in
his essay ‘Horace’s Ars Poetica and the Deconstructive Leech’ has observed that ‘The text is
multi – layered: on the one hand we hear the informal speaking voice of a man who makes no
claim to be impersonal or objective his principles are drawn from experience, not theory. On
the other hand these insights seem to be no more than part of a self-conscious literary game.’
In the later years Ars Poetica had greatly influenced Renaissance European literature – one
such instance would be French dramatist Nicholas Boileau’s L’Art Poetique published in
1674 which imitated the narrative style of Homer’s original work. Andrew Laird in the
Cambridge Companion to Horace writes that ‘There is no doubt that this single composition
by Horace – at 476 Hexameters its longest - has exercised far more influence than any of his

9
Brink (1971), viii.

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other individual poems, and more even than his collection of poems.’ Horace’s Ars Poetica is
a classic which has defined the status of all future classics that were yet to arrive on the
literary scenario.
1.5 University Questions
1. According to Horace, where should young poets look for new vocabulary? How
should those words be used?
2. What led to the degradation of Roman poetry? Elaborate with Horace’s observations.
3. How does Horace relate poetic creativity with the decorum of stage performance?
Elaborate by explaining the different counsels that Horace had offered regarding the
two genres of poetry and play.
4. Why is poetry as a genre so important for Horace?
Further Reading
 Kilpatrick, Ross S. The Poetry of Criticism: Horace Epistles II and Ars Poetica.
Abingdon: University of Alberta Press. 1990.
 Horace. Ars Poetica. trans. H Rushton Fairclough. Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars
Poetica. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pg 451-473.
 Raghunathan, Harriet. ed. Readings in Classical Literature. Delhi: Worldview
Publications. 2007.
 Brink, C.O. Horace on Poetry: The Ars Poetica. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 2011.

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