ABSTRACT
A substantial series of at least nine passages in Book 10 of Plato’s Republic associates, and indeed even goes so far as to identify, Homer, mimetic poetry and tragedy with one another in a striking and perplexing way. These passages not only raise questions about the relations between this last book of the Republic and earlier sections of it but also about the meaning and purpose of such an identification. This article examines various ways in which these questions might be answered and concludes that this identification seems to be based upon a simple logical error and that Plato’s ultimate motivations for making it remain obscure.
