'Ion' Summary

Ion has just come from a festival of Asclepius at the city of Epidaurus, after having won first prize in the competition. Socrates engages him in discussion and Ion explains how his knowledge and skill is limited to Homer, whom he claims to understand better than anyone alive. Socrates finds this puzzling as to him it seems that Homer treats many of the same subjects as other poets like Hesiod, subjects such as war or divination, and that if someone is knowledgeable in any one of those he should be able to understand what both of these poets say. Furthermore, this man is probably not the poet, like Ion, but a specialist like a doctor, who knows better about nutrition.

Socrates deduces from this observation that Ion has no real skill, but is like a soothsayer or prophet in being divinely possessed:

"For not by art do they utter these things, but by divine influence; since, if they had fully learned by art to speak on one kind of theme, they would know how to speak on all. And for this reason God takes away the mind of these men and uses them as his ministers, just as he does soothsayers and godly seers, in order that we who hear them may know that it is not they who utter these words of great price, when they are out of their wits, but that it is God himself who speaks and addresses us through them." (534b–d)

Socrates offers the metaphor of a magnet to explain how the rhapsode transmits the poet's original inspiration from the muse to the audience. He says that the god speaks first to the poet, then gives the rhapsode his skill, and thus, gods communicate to the people. Socrates posits that Ion must be out of his mind when he acts, because he can weep even though he has lost nothing, and recoil in fear when in front of an admiring audience. Ion says that the explanation for this is very simple: it is the promise of payment that inspires his deliberate disconnection from reality. Ion says that when he looks at the audience and sees them weeping, he knows he will laugh because it has made him richer, and that when they laugh, he will be weeping at losing the money (535e).