Sayfa 138 / 1391

1. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with

grave irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a

witness about ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and

medicine; attempting to distinguish the better lesson from the

worse, sometimes altering the text from design; more than once

quoting or alluding to Homer inaccurately, after the manner of

the early logographers turning the Iliad into prose, and

delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from his words, or to

make ludicrous applications of them. He does not, like

Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus

(Heracl.), but uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a

higher truth; not on a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or

Metrodorus, or in later times the Stoics, but as fancy may

dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them are sound, although

the premises are fictitious.