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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: in mid-ocean, and the words will apply to him in which the poet blamed his
enemy:--
'...Full many a thing he knew;
But knew them all badly.' (A fragment from the pseudo-Homeric poem,
'Margites.')
ALCIBIADES: How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet apply to
him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking
in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
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