Ion

Ion is one of the shortest dialogues of Plato and belongs to the group known as his early works. Its date of composition is uncertain, although certain historical details in the text, such as Athenian control over Ephesus and the names of foreign generals hired by Athens, point to a setting around 401 BCE. The characters are Socrates and Ion, a rhapsode, that is, a professional reciter of epic poetry who travels from city to city performing Homer. Ion, a native of Ephesus, has just won the prize for recitation at the festival of Asclepius in Epidaurus, and he proudly presents himself to Socrates as a great expert on the Homeric poems.

The conversation turns on a question that runs through the whole work: where does the rhapsode's and the poet's ability come from? Is it a craft, a body of knowledge that can be taught and judged, or is it the product of divine inspiration? Socrates argues that if Ion truly mastered Homer, he should also be able to judge Hesiod or Archilochus, and that in the technical passages of the poem (a chariot race, the treatment of wounds, seafaring or war) the rhapsode is no more competent than the charioteer, the physician or the general. From this he concludes that Ion's talent does not stem from knowledge but from a divine possession comparable to that of prophets and seers. The gods inspire the Muses, the Muses inspire the poet, and the poet inspires the rhapsode, who in turn passes the enthusiasm on to the audience, in a chain Socrates compares to a series of magnetized rings.

Ion accepts the thesis only in part. He admits that when reciting he feels intensely the emotions of what he tells, but he maintains that interpretation requires training. The dialogue ends with an ironic dilemma: either Ion is unjust for failing to show the knowledge he claims, or he is a divine man whose gift comes from inspiration rather than art.

The work forms part of Plato's broader reflection on disciplines other than philosophy, which he considers unable to reach ultimate knowledge of good and evil. His critique of poetry is developed further in other dialogues such as the Phaedrus, the Symposium, the Republic and the Laws. For centuries its authenticity was questioned, doubts that modern scholarship has largely set aside. In the nineteenth century Percy Bysshe Shelley translated it and read it as a defence of poetic inspiration against those, such as Thomas Love Peacock, who regarded poetry as superseded by science.