Ion

Ion

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

32 min
6,394 words
en

Ion, a successful performer of Homer, meets Socrates and is gently interrogated about what exactly his expertise consists of. Through a famous magnet analogy, Socrates argues that poets and rhapsodes do not speak from knowledge but from divine possession. A tight, charming miniature that prefigures Plato's broader suspicion of art in the Republic.

PublisherStandard Ebooks
LanguageEnglish
Source
Standard EbooksProject Gutenberg