Poet and metre

Use in the book

Socrates questions whether someone whose poetry harms himself can be called an ἀγαθὸς ποιητής. Hippothales agrees that this would make no sense. The adjective’s application concerns competence at a practice: the composer defeats the end toward which his composing is directed.

The noun therefore helps link the earlier complaint about irritating poems to the practical-expertise examples that follow. It remains “poet” here, rather than the unrestricted “maker,” because the preceding songs, meters, and encomia determine the kind of making at issue.

At 212e a poet’s verse supports calling loved children, horses, dogs, and a foreign guest φίλοι. At 213e–214a the poets are approached as fathers and guides of wisdom. Their words offer starting points, but Socrates still interprets and tests their claims.

Places to read

1. 206bἀγαθός ποτ’ ἐστὶν ποιητής — he is ever a good poet.
2. 212d–e2
3. 213e–214a

Use in the book

Aristotle’s Poetics says Homer and Empedocles share only metre, so the latter should be called a natural philosopher rather than a poet. The scholia on Dionysius Thrax repeat the distinction and extend it to astronomical writers and metrical oracles, insisting on additional poetic characteristics without specifying them fully in the excerpt. Against this restrictive tradition, Diogenes transmits Aristotle’s praise of Empedocles as Homeric, skilled in diction and metaphor, while Menander recognizes a natural-hymn genre capable of accommodating his work. Lactantius hesitates between poet and philosopher; Cicero’s analogy about professional expertise casually acknowledges an excellent poem. These are not all votes for or against the same proposition. One passage defines an art, another praises style, another classifies hymns, and another challenges an inference from one practitioner to an entire profession. Their tension makes the entry a guide to the questions witnesses are asking, rather than an attempt to settle whether Empedocles is “really” a poet.

Cicero’s example is especially easy to misread when detached from its analogy. He compares the proposed identification of natural philosophy and poetry with claiming that legal expertise includes ball-playing or draughts because Publius Mucius excelled at them. The point is that one person’s excellence in two activities does not collapse their categories. The excellent poem is conceded rather than denied. Using this passage as a simple vote that Empedocles was not a poet loses the argument’s logical structure.

Lactantius likewise does not give the same verdict as the Poetics. His hesitation arises because Empedocles writes about nature in verse, as Lucretius and Varro do in Latin. The comparison recognizes an intelligible cross-language category of doctrinal verse even while the labels remain unsettled. Menander’s natural hymns provide another way of accommodating the mixture: a composition can expound physical nature through praise or interpretation of gods. That generic solution does not require defining all poetry by its subject alone.

The testimonia consequently preserve at least four axes that a modern classification might accidentally merge: metre, manner of expression, subject matter, and recognized genre. Diogenes’ Aristotle praises manner; the Poetics argument distinguishes activity despite metre; Menander identifies a hymn type; Cicero separates professional categories without denying the poem’s quality. The word “poet” changes argumentative work across those axes. A granular lexicon should therefore retain the individual terms for metre, hymn, rhetoric, and metaphor beside this broader controversy. Their separation allows the reader to understand the ancient disagreement rather than inherit a tally of favorable and unfavorable verdicts.

Places to read

1. A 22–A 23 (polemical)Aristotle, Poetics. Separates metrical form from the category of poetry.
2. A 24–A 25 (polemical)2Scholiast on Dionysius Thrax. Extends the metre-is-insufficient argument to other didactic and oracular writers.
3. A 1 §§ 56–58 (testimony)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 57, reporting Aristotle, On Poets. Reports praise of Homeric diction and poetic resources.
4. A 24–A 25 (reception)2Lactantius, Divine Institutes; Cicero, On the Orator. Preserves uncertainty and positive appraisal in distinct arguments.
5. A 22–A 23 (reception)Menander Rhetor. Offers natural hymns as an alternative generic classification of philosophical verse.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s summary that five of six witnesses deny Empedocles is a poet oversimplifies passages that acknowledge poetic excellence or distinguish poetic expression from scientific explanation. “Nothing in common except metre” is a polemical classification, not neutral description of every stylistic feature.