Plato's Republic is full of evidence and commentary on the nature of Greek religion. Some treatment is evident, as in the censorship of the canonical works of poets and playwrights or in references to the powers and functions of the gods. In other cases, one can read about religion between the lines, not in what Plato says, but in how and why he says it, and in the proofs he considers necessary to give.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Among the most interesting facets of Greek religion is the nature of the source material. There are no sacred texts, no commandments from Zeus. The gods speak to people through oracles, but their prophecies are notoriously vague and difficult to interpret. The only religious texts available are the works of poets and playwrights. These are forms which do not claim absolute historical accuracy, since their authors willingly incorporate the fictitious and the hyperbolic; Plato calls them “allegorical” (378d). The intertwining of literature and theology gives Greek religion qualities that modern religions completely lack. The texts on which religion is based are known creations of human hands and minds. Every story of the gods' involvement in the human sphere and every account of their interactions with each other is therefore accessible to believers in the religion as a product of their own society, open to both religious and secular interpretation (i.e. aesthetic). The concept of sacred text and the presence in a religious text of a rigid code of laws objectifies a belief system in a way that fiction simply cannot. Although poets are sometimes seen as descendants of the Muses or as subject to other divine influences, they are nonetheless ordinary human beings in other respects. They are, for example, much more ordinary than the prophets and scribes who put the Bible on paper, especially if we accept the idea that the biblical scribes took dictation directly from the mouth of God. The Greek religion is therefore much more a human project; the collective production of a society to meet an inherent need. From this perspective, one can better understand Plato's seemingly reckless and insensitive censorship of the religious content of poems and plays. That the texts on which he works do not have any “sacred” stamp is essential. By modifying them, he does not change the nature of the gods themselves, but rather the nature of humanity's representation of them. The Greek gods preserve a certain kind of autonomy from diverse and contradictory theologies, a power perhaps rooted in the strength of an entire society's beliefs. Plato, as a philosopher, is no less qualified than a poet to account for the actions and nature of the gods, even if he does so from a radically different perspective. In the context of The Republic, its perspective is based on the creation of a hypothetical polis. The theoretical nature of this enterprise allows Plato to free himself even further from traditional theology. The extent of this freedom can be easily seen in Plato's treatment of other familiar cultural institutions. For example, it upsets the family, at least within the guardian class. It undermines lifelong partnership and, by giving guardians shared barracks rather than private homes, eliminates the role of the family as an economic unit. Without a household to manage, women have fewer time constraints andcan thus participate in guardianship on an equal basis with men, which constitutes another radical change. By his affirmation of the three kinds of humans (gold, silver and bronze), to which we also give a religious basis, Plato also isolates children from their biological family situation, reorganizing them according to their merits. He simply decimates the family from every angle, reorganizing it, showing no more reserve than he has shown in his treatment of religion. We have established that the conditions are such that Plato feels comfortable changing the nature of the gods, but his motivations for doing so are also interesting. His first claim is that the gods must be entirely good. This seems to be an unusual statement for the times; Plato finds a multitude of contradictions to this hypothesis in epic poetry and drama. It is astonishing that such an unusual idea receives so little logical basis. The founding exchange is as follows: “Whether in epic, in words or in tragedy, a god must always be represented as he is. Indeed, he must. Now, a god is really good, isn't he, and must be described as such? What else? (379b) The brevity of this argument and its complete lack of logical support require some sort of explanation. One could potentially find one in Plato's well-established notion of forms, but that will be left for later. Perhaps there is another explanation, that of pure necessity in the context of a hypothetical polis. Education, in many ways, is the cornerstone of the polis, as it is assigned responsibility for the achievements and virtues (or lack thereof) of all residents, is considered by Plato to be half training physics and for the other half music and poetry. We have previously established the basis of theology in music and poetry, but we can also reverse the argument: music and poetry are primarily concerned with theology. The gods play both major and minor roles in various texts, but there are few, if any, in which they are not mentioned at all. Plato is then caught in a dilemma: if his citizens want to be virtuous, they must be educated, but they must be educated with existing texts, and their content cannot always be relied upon to promote virtue. This is why he resorts to censorship; there is no other obvious option. Goodness alone is not enough to establish the gods as models of virtue. They must also be immutable. Given the specificity of this necessary quality*, much more concrete than “goodness”* and a fundamental knowledge of how Plato's general paradigm works, it is much easier to explain this requirement than the first. Plato associates the mutable with the tangible world of the senses, and immutability with the world of forms. If humanity can be aligned with the tangible earth, then the gods must occupy the heaven of forms. Indeed, much later in the text, Plato establishes the role of the gods as creators of forms. “The god... did not make more than one bed in nature, but only one, the very one which is the being of the bed” (597d). In this way, he begins to integrate religion into his broader worldview. Plato continually questions the feasibility or effectiveness of his new notions of God. The question of belief never enters openly into the dialogue. This is a challenge: it modifies the fundamental texts of a religion without questioning the impact of this action on the religion as a whole. From a contemporary perspective, the absence of this analysis is puzzling. The existence of the Apocrypha and the question of the legitimacy of these books have long been a point.