Note 63 — Chapter XII · THE LAY AUTHORS

Plato’s violent attacks on poets and poetry—in which nevertheless acc. to his own account οὐδὲν σπουδῆς χαρίν, ἀλλὰ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα πάντα δρᾶται—show once more clearly enough that in his time the old Greek view of the poets as the true teachers of their age was by no means a thing of the past. It was precisely as teachers, whether rightly or wrongly so regarded, that they seemed to him dangerous and worth opposing.