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Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the

writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of

fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire

mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones

only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly

than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those

which are now in use must be discarded.

Of what tales are you speaking? he said.

You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said; for

they are necessarily of the same type, and there is the same

spirit in both of them.

Very likely, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would

term the greater.

Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the

rest of the poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of

mankind.

But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you

find with them?

A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a

lie, and, what is more, a bad lie.