We cannot overestimate the importance of the myths of the gods and heroes for the ancient Greeks; this whole body of work comprised for them their nursery rhymes and the entirety of their children's literature. As the Greeks matured, their myths embodied their religion and a great deal of their literary entertainment, and they drew morals from the myths just as later peoples drew morals and draw morals from their reading of scripture in the Bible. This question of the place of morality in literature, and in the arts generally, will be considered as the Republic is advanced, and the continued discussion of these questions permeates our own century.
In Plato's time Greek students of metaphysics and theology, and the Greek people generally, had already begun to abandon their polytheistic (many gods) ideas and had begun to move towards a monotheistic (one god) concept of the deity, or the godhead. This explains Plato's references to the idea(s) of the god-head as "the gods" or "God" as being interchangeable; it clarifies also Plato's making distinctions among the Greek myths (stories) about the gods/God.
The last summary noted the distinctions Plato draws between the stories he regards to be morally uplifting and those that are not. The children of the state, we are reminded, are to be taught only those myths that are morally uplifting; mothers, nurses, teachers are to teach only stories that exhibit a moral impact, and censors of literature are to be appointed by the leaders of the state to ensure that only "good" stories are taught to the children. This idea of the censorship of the arts is continued in Book III. Plato acknowledges that many of the arts exhibit both figurative (allegorical) and literal meanings, but he argues that young children cannot always make distinctions between things literal and figurative. We must guarantee that the themes advanced in the fictive arts be morally uplifting.
