The Republic · ¶4998

God. [The theology of Plato is summed up by himself in the second book of the Republic under two heads, ‘God is perfect and unchangeable,’ and ‘God is true and the author of truth.’ These canons are also the test by which he tries poetry and the poets (see s. v. Poetry):—Homer and the tragedians represent the Gods as changing their forms or as deceiving men by lying dreams, and therefore they must be expelled from the state. But Plato has not yet acquired the austere temper of his later years. He does not threaten the impenitent unbeliever with bonds and death (Laws 10. 908, 910), but is content to show by argument the superiority of justice over injustice. In other respects the theology of the Republic is repeated and amplified in the Laws; the theses that God is not the author of evil and will not accept the gifts of the wicked or favour the unjust, are maintained with equal…

Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett · composite transcription based on the 1888 third edition
Benjamin Jowett, revised third edition (1888), with Stephanus numbering from the 1908 edition; composite transcription, Project Gutenberg #55201
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