[411a]
“Certainly.” “And that of the ill adjusted
is cowardiy and rude?” “It surely
is.”“Now when a man
abandons himself to music to play1 upon him and pour2 into his
soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and
dirge-like airs of which we were just now3 speaking, and gives his entire
time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that
the principle of high spirit, if he had it,
1 Cf. 561 C.
2 Demetrius,Περὶ Ἑρμ. 51, quotes this and the following sentence as an example of the more vivid expression following the less vivid. For the image cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Thesm. 18, Aeschylus Choeph. 451, Shakespeare, CymbelineIII. ii. 59 “Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing.”
3 Cf. 398 D-E, where the θρηνώδεις ἁρμονίαι are rejected altogether, while here they are used to illustrate the softening effect of music on a hard temperament. It is misspent ingenuity to harp on such “contradictions.”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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