Plato in Italy

fannuccio will bring good comedy to Athens; the life of one man alone would not suffice to amend us of the many vices by which our theater is disgraced: you will leave the care of it to your heir (*).

Alexis believes that the prohibition of naming persons makes comedy both more beautiful and more useful; more beautiful because it is truer, more useful because it is just. If you could name Socrates, it would be easy for you to compose The Clouds; if naming him is forbidden to you, you will be forced to observe his slightest nuances with greater attention and to express them with greater exactness, so as to be able to make him recognizable even without naming him. Your paintings will therefore have to be better drawn. If you could call a vice by its proper name, you would not be obliged to describe it; your ideas would present themselves to others in an entirely intellectual way, and would become subjects of reasoning rather than of sensation. We are not accustomed to laughing upon hearing the word lame, even though many times, upon seeing a lame person, we do laugh. Now here is the whole secret of good comedy. If you do nothing but call the object of your censure a cripple, you will be vulgar and not

(*) Stefano, son of Alexis, was also a comic poet, and father of Menander, who was the author of the Athenian comedy known as the "New Comedy."