[Side-note: Strict limits imposed by Plato on poets.] Even hymns to the Gods, however, may be composed in many different strains, according to the conception which the poet entertains of their character and attributes. The Homeric Hymns which we now possess could not be acceptable to Plato. While denouncing much of the current theological poetry, he assumes a censorial authority, in his joint character of Lykurgus and Sokrates,[57] to dictate what sort of poetical compositions shall be tolerated among his Guardians. He pronounces many of the tales in Homer and Hesiod to be not merely fictions, but mischievous fictions: not fit to be circulated, even if they had been true. [Footnote 57: Plutarch, Sympos. Quæst. viii. 2, 2, p. 719. [Greek: O( Pla/tôn, a(/te dê\ tô=| Sôkra/tei to\n Lukou=rgon a)namignu/s], &c.] [Side-note: His view of the purposes of fiction--little distinction between fiction and truth. His censures upon Homer and the tragedians.] Plato admits fiction, indeed, along with truth as an instrument for forming the character. Nay, he draws little distinction between the two, as regards particular narratives. But the point upon which he specially insists, is, that all the narratives in circulation, true or false, respecting Gods and Heroes, shall ascribe to them none but qualities ethically estimable and venerable. He condemns Homer and Hesiod as having misrepresented the Gods and Heroes, and as having attributed to them acts inconsistent with their true character, like a painter painting a portrait unlike to the original.[58] He rejects in this manner various tales told in these poems respecting Zeus, Hêrê, Hephæstus--the fraudulent rupture of the treaty between the Greeks and Trojans by Pandarus, at the instigation of Zeus and Athênê--the final battle of the Gods, in the Iliad[59]--the transformations of Proteus and Thetis, and the general declaration in the Odyssey that the Gods under the likeness of various strangers visit human cities as inspectors of good and bad behaviour[60]--the dream sent by Zeus to deceive Agamemnon (in the second book of the Iliad), and the charge made by Thetis in Æschylus against Apollo, of having deceived her and killed her son Achilles[61]--the violent amorous impulse of Zeus, in the fourteenth book of the Iliad--the immoderate laughter among the Gods, when they saw the lame Hephæstus busying himself in the service of the banquet. Plato will not permit the realm of Hades to be described as odious and full of terrors, because the Guardians will thereby learn to fear death.[62] Nor will he tolerate the Homeric pictures of heroes or semi-divine persons, like Priam or Achilles, plunged in violent sorrow for the death of friends and relatives:--since a thoroughly right-minded man, while he regards death as no serious evil to the deceased, is at the same time most self-sufficing in character, and least in need of extraneous sympathy.[63] [Footnote 58: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 377 E.]