[Footnote 72: Plato, Legg. iii. p. 679 C-E. [Greek: a)gathoi\ me\n dê\ dia\ tau=ta/ te ê)=san kai\ dia\ tê\n legome/nên eu)ê/theian; a(\ ga\r ê)/kouon kala\ kai\ ai)schra/, eu)ê/theis o)/ntes ê(gou=nto a)lêthe/stata le/gesthai kai\ e)pei/thonto; pseu=dos ga\r u(ponoei=n ou)dei\s ê)pi/stato dia\ sophi/an, _ô(/sper ta\ nu=n_, a)lla\ peri\ theô=n te kai\ a)nthrô/pôn ta\ lego/mena a)lêthê= nomi/zontes e)/zôn kata\ tau=ta . . . tô=n nu=n a)techno/teroi me\n kai\ a)mathe/steroi . . . eu)êthe/steroi de\ kai\ a)ndreio/teroi kai\ a(/ma sôphrone/steroi kai\ xu/mpanta dikaio/teroi.]]
This carelessness about historical matter of fact, as such--is not uncommon with ancient moralists and rhetoricians. Both of them were apt to treat history not as a series of true matters of fact, exemplifying the laws of human nature and society, and enlarging our knowledge of them for future inference--but as if it were a branch of fiction, to be handled so as to please our taste or improve our morality. Dionysius of Halikarnassus, blaming Thucydides for the choice of his subject, goes so far as to say "that the Peloponnesian war, a period of ruinous discord in Greece, ought to have been left in oblivion, and never to have passed into history" (Dion. Hal. ad Cn. Pomp. de Præc. Histor. Judic. p. 768 Reiske).
See a note at the beginning of chap. 38 of my "History of Greece".]
[Footnote 74: Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, ix. 54, p. 562. Compare Polybius, vi. 56; Dion. Hal. ii. 13; Strabo, i. p. 19.
These three, like Plato, consider the matters of religious belief to be fictions prescribed by the lawgiver for the purpose of governing those minds which are of too low a character to listen to truth and reason. Strabo states, more clearly than the other two, the employment of [Greek: mu=thoi] by the lawgiver for purposes of education and government; he extends this doctrine to [Greek: pa=sa theologi/a a)rchai+kê\ . . . pro\s tou\s nêpio/phronas] (p. 19).]
[Side-note: Views entertained by Kritias and others, that the religious doctrines generally believed had originated with law-givers, for useful purposes.]
We read in a poetical fragment of Kritias (the contemporary of Plato, though somewhat older) an opinion advanced--that even the belief in the existence of the Gods sprang originally from the deliberate promulgation of lawgivers, for useful purposes. The opinion of Plato is not exactly the same, but it is very analogous: for he holds that all which the community believe, respecting the attributes and acts of the Gods, must consist of fictions, and that accordingly it is essential for the lawgiver to determine what the accredited fictions in his own community shall be: he must therefore cause to be invented and circulated such as conduce to the ethical and political results which he himself approves. Private citizens are forbidden to tell falsehood; but the lawgiver is to administer falsehood, on suitable occasions, as a wholesome medicine.[75]