He understands that art is at once imitative and ideal, an exact representation of truth, and also a representation of the highest truth.

The same double view of art may be gathered from a comparison of the third and tenth books of the Republic, but is here more clearly and pointedly expressed.
We are inclined to suspect that both here and in the Republic Plato exaggerates the influence really exercised by the song and the dance.
But we must remember also the susceptible nature of the Greek, and the perfection to which these arts were carried by him.

Further, the music had a sacred and Pythagorean character; the dance too was part of a religious festival.

And only at such festivals the sexes mingled in public, and the youths passed under the eyes of their elders.
At the beginning of the third book, Plato abruptly asks the question, What is the origin of states?
The answer is, Infinite time.

We have already seen--in the Theaetetus, where he supposes that in the course of ages every man has had numberless progenitors, kings and slaves, Greeks and barbarians; and in the Critias, where he says that nine thousand years have elapsed since the island of Atlantis fought with Athens--that Plato is no stranger to the conception of long periods of time.