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.

Plato knew this. And I believe he set out to replace them.

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). Plato represents a fourth movement: the creation of philosophical poetry. 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........

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