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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: whether he can speak well about everything in Homer. 'Yes, indeed he can.'
'What about things of which he has no knowledge?' Ion answers that he can
interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins Socrates, when Homer speaks of
the arts, as for example, of chariot-driving, or of medicine, or of
prophecy, or of navigation--will he, or will the charioteer or physician or
prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled to admit that every
man will judge of his own particular art better than the rhapsode. He
still maintains, however, that he understands the art of the general as
well as any one. 'Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit
are always being sought after, is he not at once appointed a general?' Ion
replies that he is a foreigner, and the Athenians and Spartans will not
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