Question

Read the excerpt from The Republic by Plato.

And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well?

Which rhetorical device or appeal does Plato use to advance his claim that poets may come from different places and have different banks of knowledge?

He uses rhetorical questions to challenge others’ opinions.
He uses antithesis to explain what poets do and do not know about.
He creates ethos by establishing an example of a famous writer.
He creates kairos by showing how people are presently wary of writers.

Answer 1

He uses rhetorical questions to challenge others’ opinions.

Step-by-step explanation:

"they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well?" These are rhetorical questions, nobody answers them but they are important to what dialogue.