should consider how many senses it may bear in the particular passage.
For example: 'there was stayed the spear of bronze'--we should ask in how
many ways we may take 'being checked there.' The true mode of
interpretation is the precise opposite of what Glaucon mentions. Critics,
he says, jump at certain groundless conclusions; they pass adverse
judgment and then proceed to reason on it; and, assuming that the poet
has said whatever they happen to think, find fault if a thing is
inconsistent with their own fancy. The question about Icarius has been
treated in this fashion. The critics imagine he was a Lacedaemonian. They
think it strange, therefore, that Telemachus should not have met him when
he went to Lacedaemon. But the Cephallenian story may perhaps be the true
one. They allege that Odysseus took a wife from among themselves, and
that her father was Icadius not Icarius. It is merely a mistake, then,
that gives plausibility to the objection.

In general, the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic
requirements, or to the higher reality, or to received opinion. With
respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be
preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. Again, it may be
impossible that there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. 'Yes,' we
say, 'but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must
surpass the reality.' To justify the irrational, we appeal to what is
commonly said to be. In addition to which, we urge that the irrational
sometimes does not violate reason; just as 'it is probable that a thing
may happen contrary to probability.'

Things that sound contradictory should be examined by the same rules as
in dialectical refutation whether the same thing is meant, in the same
relation, and in the same sense. We should therefore solve the question
by reference to what the poet says himself, or to what is tacitly assumed