Dialogue

 1 Repub|    arrived at that time which the poets call the "threshold of old
 2 Repub|         then, after the manner of poets, would seem to have spoken
 3 Repub|      which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers.
 4 Repub|       execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom
 5 Repub|        and the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very
 6 Repub|           both or neither. If the poets speak truly, why, then,
 7 Repub|          the gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like
 8 Repub|       Hesiod, and the rest of the poets, who have ever been the
 9 Repub|        and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose
10 Repub|            at this moment are not poets, but founders of a State:
11 Repub|        the general forms in which poets should cast their tales,
12 Repub| concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected
13 Repub|           friend, let none of the poets tell us that ~"The gods,
14 Repub|        under the influence of the poets scaring their children with
15 Repub|           beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike
16 Repub|       entreat Homer and the other poets not to depict Achilles,
17 Repub|         let us further compel the poets to declare either that these
18 Repub|       have to say that about men; poets and story-tellers are guilty
19 Repub|           mimetic art-whether the poets, in narrating their stories,
20 Repub|           no further, and are the poets only to be required by us
21 Repub|           in other places (as the poets say, and have made the world
22 Repub|    hymeneal songs composed by our poets: the number of weddings
23 Repub|           by him and by the other poets. ~And therefore, I said,
24 Repub|     therefore, I said, the tragic poets being wise men will forgive
25 Repub|          may be in the right, and poets do really know the things
26 Repub|           appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the
27 Repub|          or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in iambic
28 Repub|    satisfied and delighted by the poets; the better nature in each
29 Repub|          Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers;
30 Repub|      lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission to speak