Plato's New Poetry

"For centuries, the Iliad and Odyssey were more than literature to the Greeks: they were formative texts, the stories through which young minds learned what it meant to be human, to be heroic, to be Greek. They functioned much as sacred scripture does in religious traditions: not as dry information to be absorbed, but as living narratives to be inhabited, returned to, and drawn from across a lifetime."

"A note on terms: When Plato discusses "poetry" (poiēsis), he means something far broader than what we typically imagine. Ancient Greek poetry encompassed epic, tragedy, and all narrative literature: the stories that shaped character and transmitted values. Homer wasn't writing short lyric verses; he was writing a civilization's core curriculum. Greek thought progressed from mythology (Homer, Hesiod) to physical philosophy (Thales, Heraclitus) to ethical philosophy (Socrates)."

"He didn't reject the mythic tradition; he transformed it. The dialogues aren't treatises. They're dramatic, imagistic, and mythic, preserving the power of narrative while redirecting it toward philosophical ends. This is why Plato took Homer so seriously as a threat. In Books 2 and 3 of the Republic, Socrates argues for strict controls on the stories told to the guardians: no tales of gods behaving badly, no excessive lamentation [377b-392c]. The concern is formative: We become what we take in."

The Iliad and Odyssey served as formative scriptures for ancient Greeks, shaping moral character, heroic identity, and civic values through recurring narrative engagement. Plato recognized the educative power of epic and sought to replace it by creating a new philosophical form that preserved narrative force while directing it toward ethical inquiry. Plato broadened the category of "poetry" to include all narrative literature and recast dialogues as dramatic and imagistic means of moral formation. He proposed censoring harmful stories and critiqued mimetic poetry to prevent deleterious imitation and protect the soul's development.

Read at Psychology Today