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We shall steady the young man still more if, at his first entrance into poetry, we give a general description of the poetic art as an imitative art and faculty analogous to painting. And let him not merely be acquainted with the oft-repeated saying that poetry is articulate painting, and painting is inarticulate poetry, but let us teach him in addition that when we see a lizard or an ape or the face of Thersites in a picture, we are pleased with it and admire it, not as a beautiful thing, but as a likeness. For by its essential nature the ugly cannot become beautiful; but the imitation, be it concerned with what is base or with what is good, if only it attain to the likeness, is commended. If, on the other hand, it produces a beautiful picture of an ugly body, it fails to give what propriety and probability require. Some painters even depict unnatural acts, as Timomachus painted a picture of Medea slaying her children, and Theon of Orestes slaying his mother, and Parrhasius of the feigned madness of Odysseus, and Chaerephanes of the lewd commerce of women with men. In these matters it is especially necessary that the young man should be trained by being taught that what we commend is not the action which is the subject of the imitation, but the art, in case the subject in hand has been properly imitated. Since, then, poetry also often gives an imitative recital of base deeds, or of wicked experiences and characters, the young man must not accept as true what is admired and successful therein, nor approve it as beautiful, but should simply commend it as fitting and proper to the character in hand. For just as when we hear the squealing of a pig, the creaking of a windlass, the whistling of the winds, and the booming of the sea, we are uneasy and annoyed; but if anybody gives a plausible imitation of these, as Parmeno imitated a pig, and Theodorus a windlass, we are pleased; and just as we avoid a diseased and ulcerous person as an unpleasant sight, but take delight in seeing Aristophon’s Philoctetes and Silanion’s Jocasta, who are represented on the stage as pining away or dying; so too the young man, as he reads what Thersites the buffoon, or Sisyphus the seducer of women, or Batrachus the bawd, is represented as saying or doing, must be taught to commend the faculty and art which imitates these things, but to repudiate and condemn the disposition and the actions which it imitates. For it is not the same thing at all to imitate something beautiful and something beautifully, since beautifully means fittingly and properly and ugly things are fitting and proper for the ugly. Witness the boots made for the crippled feet of Damonidas, who prayed once, when he had lost them, that the man who had stolen them might have feet which they would fit; they were sorry boots, it is true, but they fitted their owner. Consider the following lines: If one must needs do wrong, far best it were To do it for a kingdom’s sake,Euripides, Phoenissae, 324. and Achieve the just man’s good repute, but deeds That fit the knave; therein shall be your gain,From lines spoken by Ixion in an unknown play; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., adesp., No. 4. and A talent dowry! Shall I not accept? Can I still live if I should overlook A talent? Shall I ever sleep again If I should give it up? In Hell shall I Not suffer for impiety to gold? From an unknown poet of the new comedy; cf. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, iii. 430. These, it is true, are wicked and fallacious sentiments, but fitting respectively for Eteocles, Ixion, and an old usurer. If then we remind our sons that authors write them, not because they commend or approve them, but with the idea of investing mean and unnatural characters and persons with unnatural and mean sentiments, they could not be harmed by the opinions of poets; nay, on the contrary, the suspicion felt against the person in question discredits both his actions and words, as being mean because spoken or done by a mean man. Of such sort is the account of Paris in his wife’s arms after his cowardly escape from battle.Homer, Il. iii. 369 ff. and 441 ff. For since the poet represents no other save this licentious and adulterous man as dallying with a woman in the daytime, it is clear that he classes such sensuality as a shame and reproach.
