Note 104 — Chapter VII

The contradictions between Plato's ideas of the origin of beliefs in the gods, as given in his various writings, are of course unimportant in reference to the present discussion. In the "Timæus," as Mr. Grote has pointed out, Plato "accepts the received genealogy of the gods, upon the authority of the sons and early descendants of the gods. These eons must have known their own fathers; we ought, therefore, to 'follow the law and believe them,' though they spoke without either probable or demonstrative proof.... That which Plato here enjoins to be believed is the genealogy of Hesiod and other poets, though he does not expressly name the poets." (Grote, iii, p. 189, note.) In other words, the sons of the gods are authoritative witnesses to their genealogy, whose ipsi diximus must be believed. On the other hand, in his "Republic" and "Leges," Plato rejects the authority of those witnesses, and boldly proclaims that their legends are fictions, which must be displaced by better fictions, more consonant to a true ethical conception of the characters of the gods. It is the province of the lawgiver to supply these better legends, but they are all the while fictions, although the multitude do not know that they are so. Mr. Grote accounts for these and other discrepancies in the writings of Plato by explaining that his different dialogues are not interdependent productions, but separate disquisitions. (See his admirable and critical examination of the Platonic canon, in Chapters IV, V, VI, of his first volume.)