or any one else who ever was, had
as good ideas about Homer as I have, or as many.

SOCRATES: I am glad to hear you say so, Ion; I see that you will not
refuse to acquaint me with them.

ION: Certainly, Socrates; and you really ought to hear how exquisitely I
render Homer. I think that the Homeridae should give me a golden crown.

SOCRATES: I shall take an opportunity of hearing your embellishments
of him at some other time. But just now I should like to ask you a
question: Does your art extend to Hesiod and Archilochus, or to Homer
only?

ION: To Homer only; he is in himself quite enough.

SOCRATES: Are there any things about which Homer and Hesiod agree?

ION: Yes; in my opinion there are a good many.

SOCRATES: And can you interpret better what Homer says, or what Hesiod
says, about these matters in which they agree?

ION: I can interpret them equally well, Socrates, where they agree.

SOCRATES: But what about matters in which they do not agree?--for
example, about divination, of which both Homer and Hesiod have something
to say,--

ION: Very true:

SOCRATES: Would you or a good prophet be a better interpreter of what
these two poets say about divination, not only when they agree, but when
they disagree?

ION: A prophet.

SOCRATES: And if you were a prophet, would you not be able to interpret
them when they disagree as well as when they agree?

ION: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But how did you come to have this skill about Homer only, and
not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same
themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and
does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and
bad, skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another
and with mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world
below, and the generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes
of which Homer sings?

ION: Very true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same?

ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.

SOCRATES: What, in a worse way?

ION: Yes, in a far worse.

SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way?

ION: He is incomparably better.

SOCRATES: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about
arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than
the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good
speaker?

ION: Yes.

SOCRATES: And he who judge