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← ExitStobaeus, Volume II

Reading language

Book II Chapter 5

Chapter 5

⟨On Poetry⟩¹²⁵

Plato from Laws Book Four

There is an old story, lawgiver, which we ourselves are always telling and which everyone else accepts as well: whenever a poet sits on the Muse’s tripod, he is then not in his right mind, but, like a spring, freely lets whatever comes to him flow. Since his art is imitation, he is often compelled to contradict himself when he portrays people whose dispositions oppose one another; and he does not know whether one set of things he says or the other is true.¹²⁶

The same author from the Phaedrus

Whoever comes to the gates of poetry without the Muses’ madness, persuaded that art will make him an adequate poet, remains unfulfilled, both he himself and his poetry.¹²⁷

Plato from the Ion · 1

Your speaking well about Homer is not a matter of art, as I was just saying; rather, a divine power moves you, like the power in the stone which Euripides called the Magnesian stone, but most people call the Heraclean. For this stone not only attracts the iron rings themselves, but also puts a power into the rings, so that they can do the very same thing as the stone: attract other rings. Thus a very long chain of pieces of iron and rings sometimes hangs one from another, while the power of all of them hangs from that stone.¹²⁸

Plato from the Ion · 2

In the same way, the Muse herself makes people divinely inspired, and through these inspired people another chain of those possessed by inspiration is suspended. For all good epic poets utter all these beautiful poems through divine inspiration and possession, rather than through art. Good lyric poets do likewise: just as those in Corybantic frenzy, while not in their right minds, ⟨dance, so too lyric poets, while not in their right minds,⟩ compose these beautiful songs. Once they enter into melody and rhythm, they are in Bacchic frenzy and possessed, like those who draw honey and milk from rivers when possessed, but not when in their right minds; and the soul of the lyric poets does what they themselves describe.¹²⁹

Plato from the Ion · 3

For surely the poets tell us that they bring us their songs, gathering them from honey-flowing springs or from certain gardens and glades of the Muses, like bees, themselves flying in the same way; and what they say is true. For a poet is a light, winged, sacred thing, unable to compose until he becomes divinely inspired and out of his mind, and understanding is no longer within him. …¹³⁰

Plato from the Ion · 4

For if they knew by art how to speak well on one subject, they would know how to speak on all the others as well. For these reasons the god takes away their understanding and uses them as his servants, along with singers of oracles and divinely inspired seers, so that we who hear may know that these people, whose understanding is absent, are not the ones who utter these things of such great worth. Rather, it is the god himself who says these things and speaks to us through them.¹³¹

125.Wachsmuth’s apparatus credits Heeren with supplying the title from Photius. Ποιητική denotes the poetic art. The chapter brings together three Platonic accounts of inspiration; their language of divine possession should be read within the particular arguments from which they are excerpted.

126.Laws IV 719C. The Athenian Stranger imagines a speech to the lawgiver on behalf of the poets. Their contrasting characters explain the contradictions in their utterances; the excerpt does not say that every utterance is false. The tripod associates the poet with an inspired oracular speaker, while the spring presents speech as an unimpeded flow. Μίμησις, “imitation,” here includes portraying people and their different dispositions.

127.Phaedrus 245A; Socrates speaks. Μανία is the divinely inspired madness associated here with the Muses, and τέχνη is art understood as an acquired skill. Ἀτελής means incomplete or unfulfilled, with a possible resonance of being uninitiated at the poetic gates. Stobaeus’s excerpt ends here; the following comparison in Plato between inspired and merely skillful poetry is not appended.

128.Ion 533D–534D spans parts 1–4; Socrates addresses Ion, a performer and interpreter of Homer. Wachsmuth corrects the transmitted dialogue title “Hippias” to “Ion.” The English follows the sense of the printed, syntactically awkward opening rather than replacing its Greek with a modern Platonic text. Magnesian and Heraclean are names for the lodestone; “hangs” retains the link between the suspended chain and its dependence on a single source of power.

129.Ἔνθεος and ἐνθουσιάζειν describe divine inspiration or possession, rather than ordinary enthusiasm. Corybantic dancing and Bacchic frenzy provide ritual comparisons for the poet’s state. Angle brackets preserve the phrase restored from Plato after its omission in manuscripts F and P. In the river comparison Wachsmuth prints an uneven construction and the repeated masculine κατεχόμενοι; the English makes the comparison readable without adding the explicit “Bacchants” found in the parallel Platonic text.

130.The poet’s comparison with a bee extends the preceding image of honey. Ποιεῖν means to make or compose poetry here. The dots reproduce a break already marked in Wachsmuth’s text, rather than an omission made for this translation: his apparatus says that Stobaeus apparently omitted about eight lines of Plato deliberately. Parts 3–4 remain one ancient excerpt; their division serves the bilingual layout.

131.Socrates contrasts a systematic art with the inspired poet’s restricted ability. “Understanding” renders νοῦς, connecting this conclusion with the poet’s loss of understanding before the marked omission. The god’s use of poets as servants or instruments is a claim within the dialogue’s argument, not an editorial assertion about every work of poetry. Χρησμῳδοί are singers or chanters of oracles; μάντεις are seers.