they are stories not to be narrated in our state; the
young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he is
far from doing anything outrageous, and that he may chastise his father
when he does wrong in any manner that he likes, and in this will only be
following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.' "

" 'I quite agree with you,' he said; 'in my opinion those stories are _not
fit to be repeated_.' 'Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard
the habit of quarrelling as dishonorable, should anything be said of the
wars in heaven, and of the plots and fightings of the gods against one
another, which are quite untrue. Far be it from us to tell them of the
battles of the giants, and embroider them on garments; or of all the
innumerable other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and
relations. If they would only believe us, we would tell them that
quarrelling is unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any
quarrel between citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin
by telling children, and the same when they grow up. And these are the
sort of fictions which the poets should be required to compose. But the
narrative of Hephaestos binding Here his mother, or how, on another
occasion, Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being
beaten--such tales must not be admitted in our state, whether they are
supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For the young man cannot
judge what is allegorical and what is literal, and anything that he
receives into his mind at that age is apt to become indelible and
unalterable; and therefore the tales which they first hear should be
models of virtuous thoughts.' "

To those who look upon mythology as an ancient form of religion, such
freedom of language as is here used by Xenophanes and Plato, must seem
startling. If the Iliad were really the Bible of the Greeks, as it has not
infrequently been called, such violent invectives would have been
impossible. For let us bear in mind that Xenophanes, though he boldly
denied the existence of all the mythological deities, and declared his
belief in One God, "neither in form nor in thought like unto mortals,"(22)
was not therefore considered a heretic. He never suffered for uttering his
honest convictions: on the contrary, as far as we know, he was honored by
the people among whom he lived and taught. Nor was Plato ever punished on
account of his unbelief, an