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We have still to inquire why the poets who write the plays, and who by
the law of the twelve tables are prohibited from injuring the good name
of the citizens, are reckoned more estimable than the actors, though
they so shamefully asperse the character of the gods? Is it right that
the actors of these poetical and God-dishonoring effusions be
branded, while their authors are honored? Must we not here award the
palm to a Greek, Plato, who, in framing his ideal republic,
conceived that poets should be banished from the city as enemies of the
state? He could not brook that the gods be brought into disrepute,
nor that the minds of the citizens be depraved and besotted, by the
fictions of the poets. Compare now human nature as you see it in
Plato, expelling poets from the city that the citizens be uninjured,
with the divine nature as you see it in these gods exacting plays in
their own honor. Plato strove, though unsuccessfully, to persuade
the light-minded and lascivious Greeks to abstain from so much as
writing such plays; the gods used their authority to extort the acting
of the same from the dignified and sober-minded Romans. And not
content with having them acted, they had them dedicated to themselves,
consecrated to themselves, solemnly celebrated in their own honor. To
which, then, would it be more becoming in a state to decree divine
honors, to Plato, who prohibited these wicked and licentious plays,
or to the demons who delighted in blinding men to the truth of what
Plato unsuccessfully sought to inculcate?
This philosopher, Plato, has been elevated by Labeo to the rank of
a demigod, and set thus upon a level with such as Hercules and
Romulus. Labeo ranks demigods higher than heroes, but both he counts
among the deities. But I have no doubt that he thinks this man whom
he reckons a demigod worthy of greater respect not only than the
heroes, but also than the gods themselves. The laws of the Romans
and the speculations of Plato have this resemblance, that the latter
pronounce a wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions, while the
former restrain the license of satire, at least so far as men are the
objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets even to dwell in his city:
the laws of Rome prohibit actors from being enrolled as citizens; and
if they had not feared to offend the gods who had asked the services of
the players, they would in all likelihood have banished them
altogether. It is obvious, therefore, that the Romans could not
receive, nor reasonably expect to receive, laws for the regulation of
their conduct from their gods, since the laws they themselves enacted
far surpassed and put to shame the morality of the gods. The gods
demand stageplays in their own honor; the Romans exclude the players
from all civic honors; the former commanded that they should be
celebrated by the scenic representation of their own disgrace; the
latter commanded that no poet should dare to blemish the reputation of
any citizen.
But that demigod Plato resisted the lust of such gods as these, and
showed the Romans what their genius had left incomplete; for he
absolutely excluded poets from his ideal state, whether they composed
fictions with no regard to truth, or set the worst possible examples
before wretched men under the guise of divine actions. We for our
part, indeed, reckon Plato neither a god nor a demigod; we would not
even compare him to any of God's holy angels; nor to the
truth-speaking prophets, nor to any of the apostles or martyrs of
Christ, nay, not to any faithful Christian man. The reason of this
opinion of ours we will, God prospering us, render in its own place.
Nevertheless, since they wish him to be considered a demigod, we
think he certainly is more entitled to that rank, and is every way
superior, if not to Hercules and Romulus (though no historian could
ever narrate nor any poet sing of him that he had killed his brother,
or committed any crime), yet certainly to Priapus, or a
Cynocephalus, or the Fever,, divinities whom the Romans have
partly received from foreigners, and partly consecrated by home-grown
rites. How, then, could gods such as these be expected to promulgate
good and wholesome laws, either for the prevention of moral and social
evils, or for their eradication where they had already sprung up?,
gods who used their influence even to sow and cherish profligacy, by
appointing that deeds truly or falsely ascribed to them should be
published to the people by means of theatrical exhibitions, and by thus
gratuitously fanning the flame of human lust with the breath of a
seemingly divine approbation. In vain does Cicero, speaking of
poets, exclaim against this state of things in these words: "When
the plaudits and acclamation of the people, who sit as infallible
judges, are won by the poets, what darkness benights the mind, what
fears invade, what passions inflame it!"
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