nk wine. This
latter, however, may be an instance of metaphor. But whenever also a
word seems to imply some contradiction, it is necessary to reflect how
many ways there may be of understanding it in the passage in question;
e.g. in Homer's _te r' hesxeto xalkeon hegxos_ one should consider the
possible senses of 'was stopped there'--whether by taking it in this
sense or in that one will best avoid the fault of which Glaucon speaks:
'They start with some improbable presumption; and having so decreed it
themselves, proceed to draw inferences, and censure the poet as though
he had actually said whatever they happen to believe, if his statement
conflicts with their own notion of things.' This is how Homer's silence
about Icarius has been treated. Starting with, the notion of his having
been a Lacedaemonian, the critics think it strange for Telemachus not to
have met him when he went to Lacedaemon. Whereas the fact may have been
as the Cephallenians say, that the wife of Ulysses was of a Cephallenian
family, and that her father's name was Icadius, not Icarius. So that it
is probably a mistake of the critics that has given rise to the Problem.

Speaking generally, one has to justify (1) the Impossible by reference
to the requirements of poetry, or to the better, or to opinion. For
the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to
an unconvincing possibility; and if men such as Zeuxis depicted be
impossible, the answer is that it is better they should be like that, as
the artist ought to improve on his model. (2) The Improbable one has
to justify either by showing it to be in accordance with opinion, or by
urging that at times it is not improbable; for there is a probability of
things happening also against probability. (3) The contradictions found
in the poet's language one should first test as one does an opponent's
confutation in a dialectical argument, so as to see whether he means
the same thing, in the same relation, and in the same sense, before
admitting that he has contradicted either something he has said himself
or what a man of sound sense assumes as true. But there is no possible
apology for improbability of Plot or depravity of character, when they
are not necessary and no use is made of them, like the improbability
in the appearance of Aegeus in _Medea_ and the baseness of Menelaus in
_Orestes_.

The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five kinds:
the allegation is always that so