Nessa Wesley’s Reviews > Ion > Status Update

Socrates: '(...) And you, Ion, when the name of Homer is mentioned have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others. You ask, 'Why is this?' The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine inspiration.'

Socrates: '(...) Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy seem to be among the persons or places of which you are speaking, whether they are in Ithaca or in Troy, or whatever may be the scene of the poem?' (...)
Ion: '(...) I must frankly confess that at the tale of pity my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of horrors, my hair stands on end and my heart throbs.'

Socrates: '(...) For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and now allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of a man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of songs? (...)'

Socrates: '(...) and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, and he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.'

Socrates: '(...) and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; (...)'

Socrates: '(...) For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.'

Socrates: '(...) The gift which you (Ion) possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you. (...) For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.

Socrates: '(...) For consider what a very trivial thing is this which I have said - a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same. Let us consider this matter; is not the art of painting a whole?'

Socrates: '(...) Does your art extend to Hesiod and Archilochus, or to Homer only?'
Ion: 'To Homer only; he is in himself quite enough.'