Chapter 14.—That Plato, Who
Excluded Poets from a Well-Ordered City, Was Better Than These Gods
Who Desire to Be Honoured by Theatrical Plays.
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?