Ion (539)

Hapless men, what bane is this afflicts you? Your heads and faces and limbs below are shrouded in night, and wailing is enkindled, and cheeks are wet with tears: of ghosts the porch is full, and the court full of them also, hastening hell-wards ’neath the gloom: and the sun is perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is spread abroad;

For as they were eager to pass over, a bird had crossed them, an eagle of lofty flight, pressing the host at the left hand,

539c

and bearing a blood-red monster of a snake, alive and still struggling; nor had it yet unlearnt the lust of battle. For bending back it smote its captor on the breast by the neck, and the bird in the bitterness of pain cast it away to the ground, and dropped it down in the midst of the throng; and then with a cry flew off on the wafting winds.

And you speak the truth, Socrates.

And so do you, Ion, in saying that. Now you must do as I did, and in return for my picking out and the Iliad the kinds of passage that belong severally to the seer,

What I say, Socrates, is—all passages.

Surely you do not say all, Ion! Can you be so forgetful? And yet forgetfulness would ill become a rhapsode.