The exaggerated pretension here ascribed to Ion makes him look contemptible--like the sentiment ascribed to him, 535 E, "If I make the auditors weep, I myself shall laugh and pocket money," &c.] [Footnote 32: Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 21, in the conversation between the younger Perikles and Sokrates--[Greek: tô=n de\ stratêgô=n oi( plei=stoi au)toschedia/zousin.] Also iii. 5, 24. Compare, respecting the generals, the striking lines of Euripides, Androm. 698, and the encomium of Cicero (Academ. Prior. 2, 1) respecting the quickness and facility with which Lucullus made himself an excellent general.] [Footnote 33: Xen. Mem. iii. 4, especially iii. 4, 6, where Nikomachides asks with surprise, [Greek: le/geis su/, ô)= Sô/krates, ô(s tou= au)tou= a)ndro/s e)sti chorêgei=n te kalô=s kai\ stratêgei=n?]] [Footnote 34: See the very curious extract from the contemporary Ion of Chios, in Athenæus, xiii. 604. Aristophanes of Byzantium says that the appointment of Sophokles to this military function arose from the extra-ordinary popularity of his tragedy Antigonê, exhibited a little time before. See Boeckh's valuable 'Dissertation on the Antigonê,' appended to his edition thereof, pp. 121-124.] [Side-note: Knowledge, opposed to divine inspiration without knowledge.] Ion is willing enough (as he promises) to exhibit before Sokrates one of his eloquent discourses upon Homer. But Sokrates never permits him to arrive at it: arresting him always by preliminary questions, and requiring him to furnish an intelligible description of the matter which his discourse is intended to embrace, and thus to distinguish it from other matters left untouched. A man who cannot comply with this requisition,--who cannot (to repeat what I said in a previous chapter) stand a Sokratic cross-examination on the subject--possesses no rational intelligence of his own proceedings: no art, science, knowledge, system, or method. If as a practitioner he executes well what he promises (which is often the case), and attains success--he does so either by blind imitation of some master, or else under the stimulus and guidance of some agency foreign to himself--of the Gods or Fortune. This is the Platonic point of view; developed in several different ways and different dialogues, but hardly anywhere more conspicuously than in the Ion. [Side-note: Illustration of Plato's opinion respecting the uselessness of written geometrical treatises.]