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Such things as this are what the poets fabricate intentionally, but more numerous are the things which they do not fabricate, but think and believe in their own hearts, and then impart to us in their false colouring. Take for example what Homer has said relating to Zeus: In the scales he placed two fates of Death so grievous, One of Achilles and the other of horse-taming Hector; Grasping the middle he poised it, and Hector’s fated day descended. Down to Hades he went, and Phoebus Apollo forsook him.Homer, Il. xxii. 210. Now Aeschylus has fitted a whole tragedy to this story, giving it the title of The Weighing of Souls, and has placed beside the scales of Zeus on the one side Thetis, and on the other Dawn, entreating for their sons who are fighting. But it is patent to everybody that this is a mythical fabrication which has been created to please or astound the hearer. But in the lines Zeus, appointed to decide the outcome of men’s fighting Ibid. iv. 84. and A fault doth God create in men Whene’er he wills to crush a house in woe,From the Niobe, of Aeschylus; Nauck,Trag.Graec. Frag., Aeschylus, No. 156. we have at last statements in accord with their opinion and belief, as they thus publish to us and try to make us share their delusion and ignorance regarding the gods. Then again the monstrous tales of visits to the shades, and the descriptions, which in awful language create spectres and pictures of blazing rivers and hideous places and grim punishments, do not blind very many people to the fact that fable and falsehood in plenty have been mingled with them like poison in nourishing food. And not Homer nor Pindar nor Sophocles really believed that these things are so when they wrote: From there the slow-moving rivers of dusky night Belch forth a darkness immeasurable,Pindar, Frag. 130 Christ. and On past Ocean’s streams they went and the headland of Leucas,Homer, Od. xxiv. 11. and The narrow throat of Hades and the refluent depths. Cf. Nauck,Trag.Graec. Frag., Sophocles, No. 748. However, take the case of those who, bewailing and fearing death as something piteous, or want of burial as something terrible, have given utterance to sentiments like these: Go not hence and leave me behind unwept, unburied,Homer, Od. xi. 72. and Forth from his body went his soul on wing to Hades, Mourning its fate and leaving its vigour and manhood,Homer, Il. xvi. 856 and xxii. 362. and Destroy me not untimely; for ’tis sweet To see the light. Compel me not to gaze Upon the regions underneath the earth.Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, 1218. These are the voices of persons affected by emotion and prepossessed by opinions and delusions. For this reason such sentiments take a more powerful hold on us and disturb us the more, inasmuch as we become infected by their emotions and by the weakness from whence they proceed. Against these influences, then, once more let us equip the young from the very outset to keep ever sounding in their ears the maxim, that the art of poetry is not greatly concerned with the truth, and that the truth about these matters, even for those who have made it their sole business to search out and understand the verities, is exceedingly hard to track down and hard to get hold of, as they themselves admit; and let these words of Empedocles be constantly in mind: Thus no eye of man hath seen nor ear hath heard this, Nor can it be comprehended by the mind,The passage is quoted more fully by Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. vii. 122-4; cf. Diels, Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta, Empedocles, No. 2 and the words of Xenophanes: Never yet was born a man nor ever shall be Knowing the truth about the gods and what I say of all things,Quoted with two additional lines by Sextus Empiricus, Adv. math. vii. 49; cf. Diels, Poet. Philos. Frag., Xenophanes, No. 34. and by all means the words of Socrates, in Plato,Plato, Phaedo, 69 D. when he solemnly disavows all acquaintance with these subjects. For young people then will give less heed to the poets, as having some knowledge of these matters, when they see that such questions stagger the philosophers.
