Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/476

 444 fflSTOR? OF GREECE The comments which Plato has delivered with so much force in his Republic, and the enactments which he deduce.1 from them, are in the main an expansion of that sentiment of condemnation, which he shared with so many other philosophers, towards a large portion of the Homeric and Hesiodic stories. 1 But the manner in which he has set forth this opinion, unfolds to us more clearly the real character of the mythical narratives. They are creations of the productive minds in the community, deduced from the sup- posed attributes of the gods and heroes : so Plato views them, and in such character he proposes to amend them. The legisla- tor would cause to be prepared a better and truer picture of the foretime, because he would start from truer (that is to say, more creditable) conceptions of the gods and heroes. For Plato re- jects the mythes respecting Zeus and Here, or Theseus and Peirithous, not from any want of evidence, but because they are unworthy of gods and heroes : he proposes to call forth new mythes, which, though he admits them at the outset to be fiction, he knows will soon be received as true, and supply more valua- ble lessons of conduct. We may consider, then, that Plato disapproves of the attempt to identify the old mythes either with exaggerated history or with disguised philosophy. He shares in the current faith, with- out any suspicion or criticism, as to Orpheus, Palamedes, Daeda- lus, Amphion, Theseus, Achilles, Cheiron, and other mythical personages ; a but what chiefly fills his mind is, the inherited sen- timent of deep reverence for these superhuman characters and for the age to which they belonged, a sentiment sufficiently strong to render him not only an unbeliever in such legends as conflict with it, but also a deliberate creator of new legends for the purpose of expanding and gratifying it. The more we ex- amine this sentiment, both in the mind of Plato as well as in 1 The censure which XenophanGs pronounced upon the Homeric legends has already been noticed: Herakleitus (Diogen. Laiirt. ix. 1) and Metrodo- rus, the companion and follower of Epicurus, were not less profuse in their invectives, iv ypa(j/j.dai TOGOVTOK; T notary ^.e/lotdop^rat (Plutarch, NOD posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, p. 1086). He even advised persons not tc be ashamed to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of cot knowing whether Hector was a Greek or a Trojan (Plut. i>. p. 1094)
 * Plato, Republic iii. 4-5. p. 391 ; De I/Jgg. Hi. 1. p. 677.