both is found in epic, and in
several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with me?

Yes, he said; I see now what you meant.

I will ask you to remember also what I began by saying, that we had
done with the subject and might proceed to the style.

Yes, I remember.

In saying this, I intended to imply that we must come to an
understanding about the mimetic art,--whether the poets, in narrating
their stories, are to be allowed by us to imitate, and if so, whether
in whole or in part, and if the latter, in what parts; or should all
imitation be prohibited?

You mean, I suspect, to ask whether tragedy and comedy shall be
admitted into our State?

Yes, I said; but there may be more than this in question: I really do
not know as yet, but whither the argument may blow, thither we go.

And go we will, he said.

Then, Adeimantus, let me ask you whether our guardians ought to be
imitators; or rather, has not this question been decided by the rule
already laid down that one man can only do one thing well, and not
many; and that if he attempt many, he will altogether fall of gaining
much reputation in any?

Certainly.

And this is equally true of imitation; no one man can imitate many
things as well as he would imitate a single one?

He cannot.

Then the same person will hardly be able to play a serious part in
life, and at the same time to be an imitator and imitate many other
parts as well; for even when two species of imitation are nearly
allied, the same persons cannot succeed in both, as, for example, the
writers of tragedy and comedy--did you not just now call them
imitations?

Yes, I did; and you are right in thinking that the same persons cannot
succeed in both.

Any more than they can be rhapsodists and actors at once?

True.

Neither are comic and tragic actors the same; yet all these things are
but imitations.

They are so.

And human nature, Adeimantus, appears to have been coined into yet
smaller pieces, and to be as incapable of imitating many things well,
as of performing well the actions of which the imitations are copies.

Quite true, he replied.

If then we adhere to our original notion and bear in mind that our
guardians, setting aside every other business, are to dedicate
themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in the State, making
this their craft, and engaging in no work which does not bear on this
end, they ought not to practise or imitate anything else; if they
imitat