0192 Io 540d

Io had been forced to narrow the rhapsode's expertise down to knowing what sort of things it would be fitting for different types of people to say, ,such as a man, a woman, a slave or a ruler, rather than any type of craftsman. However, Socrates has derailed this approach to rhapsody by giving each of these types of people various types of techne: the ruler he has turned into a ruler of a ship at sea (a helmsman), and a ruler of a sick person (a physician); even the slave becomes a ruler of oxen (an oxherd), a woman becomes a ruler of wool (a spinner), and in all these, Io agrees that the craftsman would know better than a rhapsode what sort of things it is fitting for these types of people to say. Socrates now turns to the man, and Io thinks that at least here he knows what sort of things it is fitting for a man to say. It turns out that he doesn't, again according to the flawed assumption that any subject matter is exclusive to only one techne or another.