How, then, does Plato banish Homer from his republic, since, in
the embassy to Achilles, he represents Phœnix as saying to
Achilles, “Even the gods themselves are not inflexible,” 2556
though Homer said this not of the king and Platonic maker of the
gods, but of some of the multitude whom the Greeks esteem as
gods, as one can gather from Platos saying, “gods of gods?” For
Homer, by that golden chain, 2557 refers all power and might to
the one highest p. 283 God. And the rest of the gods, he said,
were so far distant from his divinity, that he thought fit to
name them even along with men. At least he introduces Ulysses
saying of Hector to Achilles, “He is raging terribly, trusting
in Zeus, and values neither men nor gods.” 2558 In this passage
Homer seems to me without doubt to have learnt in Egypt, like
Plato, concerning the one God, and plainly and openly to declare
this, that he who trusts in the really existent God makes no
account of those that do not exist. For thus the poet, in
another passage, and empl