On the Witch of Endor 1 part 4/4

Indeed, at any rate, Plato, when questioned, defines discourses (logoi) to be of the province of music;

and he said that of discourses there is a twofold kind: the one true, the other false;

and that one must be educated in both, but first in the false ones.

For he said that children are, in the first place, charmed by the incantation of myths;

and this is, generally speaking, false, though there is something true in it as well.

'And [do we so easily allow such things to be told] to any young and tender child? For then most of all is it molded, and takes on whatever stamp one may wish to impress on each.'

And through such sayings he tries to make plain that one ought not to flood the ears of newcomers with unmingled false-speakings, since the stamps of false doctrine, once impressed on lads at a tender age, tend to become unchangeable and hard to wash out;

wherefore, consistently, he brings in again:

'Shall we then so easily allow,' he said, 'the children to hear just any myths fashioned by just anyone, and to take into their souls opinions for the most part contrary to those which, when they are grown, we shall think they ought to hold?' He has by no means said that we shall allow it.

'First, as it seems, we must supervise the myth-makers, and approve whatever fine myth they make, but reject whatever is not;'

'and the approved ones let us persuade the nurses and mothers to tell to the children, and to mold their souls with the myths far more than their bodies with their hands.'

'But of those they now tell, the greater part must be cast out.' Then, since, on being asked about the proportional difference of each, he said that in the greater myths the lesser ones too are recognized, when Adeimantus asked again, making plain that he did not know these either, once more rejoining he said:

'Those which Hesiod,' I said, 'and Homer used to tell us;'

'for these surely composed false myths for men, and used to tell them, and still tell them.'

If, then, he declares the epic poems of Homer and Hesiod to be false myths—which most of all even charm their hearers for the sake of education, and moreover by their fine diction rouse the mind to perfect eloquence—how much more will one define as false myth-makings all the words which the demon-possessed old woman uttered, especially since the very name of the belly-myth woman suggests this sense? For if the children of the Greeks, who are precise about the formation of names for each thing, in the Greek tongue call myths 'false fictions,' it is consistent to suspect, from the name, the very thing for which it is properly assigned.

But the fable-tellings of Aesop know such myth-fictions as the lads in their games often jest at in playfulness, and as old women crazed with corybantic frenzy chant in babbling tales (sometimes they do these things while drenching their gullet with copious wine, and, attending to the cup and the drink, prattle without measure);

but those who reckon that they uphold the philosophical character even slandered musical compositions as being false kinds of myths, as was fitting.

If, then, the very name is rightly assigned to the thing, the belly-myth woman seems to fashion a myth in the belly;

for she does not speak soberly out of her natural mind, but the demon, lurking in her innermost parts, preys upon her and injures her understanding, and from the belly he sounds out, framing myth-like fictions; and, transforming himself into varied shapes, he leads the soul astray with diverse phantoms.

And since he changes into all manner of forms, being of many faces, no less still does he feign to come up out of the earth and to speak;

then, alternating his ministrations on both sides together with the shapes, he seems to present the one who comes up as distinct from the one who calls; but it is the same one who, running here and there, changes his appearances, in order that by deeds and words he may demonstrate that he is a liar.

He pretends, at any rate, that those very persons bring up the dead, as it is reasonable to suppose from such a dramatic show—introducing in a feigned manner joyless faces and gloomy phantoms, and presenting things wholly downcast and full of a corpse-like stench, as if summoned from Hades; and he makes them terrible, as it were let loose for a little while from prison or from bonds, then again passing from here back to there.

...frightening the soul out of [its wits] by the apparitions, fashioning pallid forms, and an eye grim or downcast, as of the dead just now undertaking to breathe in and again to breathe out;

for the forger is wont, by pretense, to fashion himself in conformity with terrible things.

But sometimes he himself changes himself into many forms, and sometimes he makes use as helpers of the demons like-mannered to him; yet he neither summons souls of prophets out of Hades, nor spirits of the righteous, nor the angelic ranks, but, on the contrary, he came to be an object of mockery before the angels, and was given over to the best of men to be trampled, dashed headlong face-down to the ground.

But this one, hurled down from the heights with a violent rush, was laid prostrate on his back;

and to the Almighty God alone, and to his most divine Son, does it belong to bring up souls out of Hades and to have choirs of angels standing by in order—which is the peculiar and chosen prerogative of the nature of the Divine.