DEXIMENES

Mantias doesn’t believe in individual people.

MANTIAS

Yes, I do! That’s just what I do believe in and you don’t! Art must overcome the alienation of men from each other. It should try to make sense of society. [ To Acastos ] That’s better than private fantasy, isn’t it?

DEXIMENES

If you ban private personal relations you ban the whole of art.

MANTIAS

Our painting and our sculpture represent people who are physically healthy. I think our arts should represent people who are morally healthy!

SOCRATES

Who are these people?

MANTIAS

Good citizens.

DEXIMENES

I know, healthy handsome young men performing valuable social duties!

MANTIAS

All right, you jeer at the idea of the good citizen! What have you ever done with all that cleverness and idealism you had when we were their age?

Deximenes is hurt.

I’m sorry. This society is full of injustice and misery. Isn’t it, Acastos? Yes or no?

ACASTOS

Yes.

MANTIAS

Won’t the whole man, the decent man, try to change this, won’t he devote all he has to changing it? Why should artists be exempt? Why shouldn’t they use their talents to help their society? Art is a thought concealed in an emotional package, as Acastos said –

ACASTOS

I didn’t – I don’t think I did –

MANTIAS

Emotion is important but it must be simplified –

SOCRATES

Callistos made a distinction between realistic copying, and formal schematic representation, like a map. What would your simplified art be like?

MANTIAS

Formal and schematic, but realistic enough to be plausible. The meaning must be clear to everybody.

DEXIMENES

And not just to us intellectuals, as Callistos would say!

MANTIAS

Precisely. Intellectuals are usually self–indulgent people who think refined private thoughts and neglect the public good.

ACASTOS

But you’re an intellectual!

DEXIMENES

He’s a boss–type intellectual.

ACASTOS

You want art to be propaganda!

MANTIAS

Art is education. All education propagates values. They may as well be the right values. No?

ACASTOS

But if it’s propaganda and persuasion it isn’t true!

MANTIAS

Socrates told you to think what you mean by ‘true’. When we make moral judgements on people we’re trying to persuade them, we’re trying to affect their conduct, aren’t we – aren’t we?

ACASTOS

Well–

MANTIAS

You admire Pericles, don’t you?

ACASTOS

Yes.

MANTIAS

Wasn’t he a persuader, a great rhetorician, all those marvellous speeches? – You’ve got to encourage your citizens, make them confident, proud of their state –

DEXIMENES

Give them a glorious past!

MANTIAS

It matters how we see our past, that’s obvious.

DEXIMENES

Some things are better forgotten, some things must never be forgotten!

ACASTOS

We never let anyone forget that we defeated the Persians!

MANTIAS

All right! Every country has a selective tradition. Most Persians have probably never heard of the Battle of Marathon!

ACASTOS

What you call selective tradition is lying! We ought to tell the truth about the past.

MANTIAS