╇ i
The Anatomy of Myth
ii
╇ iii
The Anatomy of Myth
The Art of Interpretation
from the Presocratics
to the Church Fathers
michael herren
1
iv
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​P ublication Data
Names: Herren, Michael, author.
Title: The anatomy of myth : the art of interpretation from the presocratics
to the church fathers / Michael Herren.
Description: New York, New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017087 (print) | LCCN 2016028998 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190606695 (hardback)| ISBN 9780190606725 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190606718 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Myth. | Mythology.
Classification: LCC BL312 .H47 2017 (print) | LCC BL312 (ebook) | DDC 201/.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017087
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
╇ v
Contents
Preface╇ vii
Abbreviations╇ xiii
Introduction╇ 1
1. The Paradigm of the Poets╇ 13
2. What Makes a Work Authoritative?╇ 27
3. Physis—╉Redefining the Gods╇ 37
4. Flirting with Atheism╇ 51
5. Attacking Poetry╇ 63
6. The Beginnings of Allegory╇ 73
7. Finding History in Myth╇ 83
8. Theos—╉Rediscovering God╇ 97
9. The Growth of Allegory╇ 109
10. Saving the Poets without Allegory╇ 123
11. From Allegory to Symbolism╇ 131
12. Greek Exegesis and Judaeo-╉Christian Books╇ 147
13. Reflection: How Lasting Was the Greek Achievement?╇ 165
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contents
Notes 171
Bibliography 189
Glossary of Names and Terms 199
General Index 219
vii
Preface
This is a book for students. By students I mean anyone interested in learning
how ancient ideas influence modern thought and modern ways of being. My
book, though written for students, is not a textbook; that is, it is not a simple
summary of the main lines of myth interpretation as explained by previous
scholars. Rather, it is a fresh attempt to look at the methods of interpreting
the myths contained in ancient authoritative texts in the context of the history of ideas. I attempt to weave the strands of myth interpretation with those
of shifting paradigms in ancient thought and culture, particularly as they
relate to ideas about god, nature, the origins of the cosmos, and the fate of
the soul. I also relate developments in interpretative methods to issues such
as literacy, authority, the agenda of the philosophical schools, and attitudes to
poetry. I touch on the large questions of freedom of expression, the effect of
myth criticism on religious belief and social cohesion, and the impact of critical interpretations developed by pagans on the understanding of Jewish and
Christian scriptures.
The notion of a “paradigm” requires an explanation. By “paradigm” I mean
the bundle of ideas prevailing at a given time that encompass the divine, its
relation to nature, the origins of the world and humans, the beginnings of
society, and the concept of the good life. Such ideas can be documented for
any literate age. But one must keep in mind that they are the creations of elites;
they cannot be taken as evidence for the universal beliefs of a given society.
The most influential teachings prevailing in our own society might be captured by words and phrases such as evolutionism, secularism (“humanism”),
religious and philosophical skepticism, individualism (anti-​authoritarianism),
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preface
and faith in progress through science—​to name some. Such notions form the
assumptions and working hypotheses of pundits and public intellectuals, and
are disseminated in popular books, print journalism, television, blogs, and
social media. They are not accepted by everyone, and eventually invite a backlash that leads to culture wars and a new paradigm.
For the ancient world I have hypothesized three paradigms that correspond roughly to three eras: (1) the Paradigm of the Poets (ca. 800–​600
b.c.e.), (2) the Paradigm of Physis (Nature, ca. 600–​350 b.c.e.), and (3) the
Paradigm of Theos (god, 350 b.c.e. onward). Each was succeeded in turn when
its ideas were perceived as exhausted or inadequate. Myth and poetry gave way
to natural philosophy, which in turn was undermined by the criticism that
it did not adequately explain causation or account for god. The theism that
replaced it, however, did not sweep away everything with it. The critical spirit,
the Greek idea of historia (“investigation,” “inquiry”), survived and endured
even through “the triumph” of Christianity. Remarkably, the greatest debt to
ancient Greek thought incurred by Christianity was not a particular philosophical doctrine, but the habit of reading its scriptures critically—​much as a
pagan Greek might read Homer.
This book entertains a thesis: the exposure of the most authoritative
works of the ancient Greeks to public criticism and discussion was a decisive step toward creating the open, pluralistic society that we in the Western
nations enjoy today. I do not mean to over-​spin this. The speculative thinkers
of the sixth and fifth century b.c.e. were not proto-​secularists, or precursors of
today’s “humanists.” Very few of them engaged in open assaults on religion,
even in times when it was safe to do so. With few exceptions, they did not
attempt to rid their world of gods, but rather to make the gods better, more
worthy of emulation. Their idea of a rational cosmos included the divine, but
it opened the debate over what the nature of the gods really was and what
their role in the operation of the universe may have been. Whatever their opinions on these momentous questions, the early Greeks agreed on one issue: it
was just fine to disbelieve myths, and to criticize portions of what the ancient
poets Homer and Hesiod had to say about the gods. The poets may have been
inspired in some way, but that was no guarantee against misrepresentation of
the divine.
The image invoked by the title word Anatomy refers to the cutting up
(Greek ana-​tomē) of the body (that is, the literal meaning) of a myth to see
what lies inside. We can imagine—​in good Roman fashion—​that a reading
of the entrails is to follow. And like all such efforts in divination, interpretations varied. Because myths were often coupled with poems, the anatomy of
a myth became closely linked to the dissecting of words (especially names) in
the poems that contained them. I trace the main lines of these different anatomies, insofar as they can be documented. I emphasize the importance of “public interpretation,” as I focus on the origin and growth of the open criticism of
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ix
myth and poetry and attempts to interpret them in published form. The advent
of literacy brought with it the possibility of publication. For the ancient Greeks,
any book in the public domain, regardless of topic, was open to discussion and
criticism, even scorn when warranted. Freedom of expression was abetted by
freedom of movement also, as early Greek thinkers moved from place to place
and brought their books with them. There were indeed attempts at repression,
but these were localized, sporadic, and in the long run unsuccessful.
I have designed my book as a narrative. There is a story to be told, and
stories involve advances and reversals, vicissitudes and progress. They do not
always end happily; this one does not end unhappily. I am naive enough to
believe that the appropriation of pagan Greek methods of critiquing ancient
myths by Jewish and Christian interpreters of the scriptures had a long-​term
beneficial effect on later readers of religious books. However, the frame of my
story will be limited to an initial impulse from Jewish scholars to adopt the
tools of pagan Greek myth criticism, followed by their appropriation by the
Greek Christian Fathers. The methods established by the pagan Greeks and
adapted by Jewish and Christian scholars passed into the Western Middle Ages
and the Renaissance, when they were once again applied, with some variations, for interpreting the pagan classics. “Classical exegesis” (my term for the
bundle of ancient interpretative methods) served first to hedge the scriptures
against fundamentalism, then to preserve the pagan classics against assaults
by zealous Christians.1
The historical era covered, as the subtitle suggests, is the entire ancient
world. I begin with Homer and end, in the Greek domain, with the Neoplatonist
Proclus, who died in 485; in the Latin world I stop at Augustine, who died in
430. The geographical confines are, unsurprisingly, set in cities around the
Mediterranean. I start in Ionia (western coastal Turkey), and proceed to South
Italy, Athens, Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, and back to Athens. While one
can mark certain turning points where paradigms shift, the reader is cautioned against expecting absolute breaks between one paradigm and another.
There is evidence of scientific thinking in the early poets, theistic dogmatism
among the natural philosophers (the Presocratics), and continuity of scientific
thought in the period when theism is predominant.
Although the present book has been gestating for about two decades, I felt
some urgency to complete and publish it in the light of the events in Paris in
2015. I believe the pundits are correct about one thing at least: although the
series of attacks differed in outcome, their purpose was the same. They were
all assaults on freedom. I do not leap from that assertion to an indictment of
Islam or religion in general. But I do fear that there is a link between irrational
acts of cruelty and misguided understandings of religious texts. In that light,
I believe that the ancient Greeks have something of benefit to offer today’s
world. Their methods of interpreting their authoritative poets may strike modern literary scholars as primitive or naive, but they were infused with a healthy
x
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preface
skepticism, a refusal to believe what appeared irrational, or accept myths at
face value.
The idea for this book springs, first and foremost, from my years of
teaching courses on the ancient humanities at York University and graduate seminars on the classical tradition and the Latin Bible at the University
of Toronto. Several of these courses are directly related to the interpretation
of myth: “Myths and Their Meanings,” “Greek Mythology,” and “Texts and
Interpretation.” Matters related to the interpretation of authoritative books also
arise in the seminar I regularly teach on St. Augustine. By teaching the survey
course “Myths and Their Meanings,” I became acquainted with the methods
developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for dealing with myths
cross-​culturally and the various modern schools of myth interpretation—​the
“myth and ritual school,” structuralism, functionalism (based on historical
linguistics), and the different psychoanalytical approaches.
Perhaps one of the most surprising features of this book is that it is short,
containing chapters of moderate length. I had a great deal more documentary
evidence at my disposal than I use here, but many passages illustrate the same
exegetical points. And so, rather than write a 600-​page book that people might
use for reference, but not really read, it seemed wiser to write a shorter book
that could be read and absorbed in a few sittings. The strategy of brevity also
serves the pedagogical aims of the book, one with chapters of manageable
length that can be used in conjunction with primary sources in a college or
university setting. A short book also supports the aim of presenting a thesis.
The development of a variety of interpretative methods is a worthy subject,
but I would not want this to obscure the central point that it is the activity
of interpreting authoritative texts, and the freedom to do so, that has helped
create the society that we currently enjoy. Thus, I draw upon the Greek poet
Callimachus: a small book is a great virtue.
My research has been generously supported at various stages by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Killam
Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Alexander-​von-​Humboldt
Stiftung. I am especially grateful to the Alexander-​von-​Humboldt-​Stiftung
for a research prize in 2004 that enabled me to investigate a large number
of manuscripts in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. The many
hours needed to collect the large number of slips containing excerpts from
Greek and Latin texts relative to myth interpretation were afforded me by
the Killam Foundation of the Canada Council, which awarded me a Killam
Fellowship (1996–​1998) and by a Guggenheim Fellowship (1998–​1999).
As freedom is one of the leitmotifs of my work, I express my gratitude to
York University, and especially to Atkinson College, for the freedom it gave
me to teach what I saw fit, and to take leaves when I needed them to pursue
my research. I would like to thank my longtime colleague and friend Ross
Arthur for reading the manuscript and suggesting a publisher; Florence
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xi
Silver for decades-​long encouragement to write a book on Greek myth; John
Magee, Brad Inwood, and Brian Stock for stimulating and helpful discussion; the readers for Oxford University Press for their very helpful reports
preventing error and initiating improvement; executive editor Stefan
Vranka for his faith in this project; and, most of all, my wife, art historian
Shirley Ann Brown, for many wise suggestions over the course of preparing
and revising this book, and for meticulous editing and proofreading of the
final draft.
xii
xiii
Abbreviations
For full bibliographical information consult the Bibliography.
Deut.
DK
(Bible) Deuteronomy
Diels, Hermann and Walter Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker
Epid.
(Cornutus) Epidrome
FGrH
F. Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
Gen. (Bible) Genesis
H.P.
(Heraclitus the Younger) Homeric Problems
Il.
(Homer) Iliad
KRS
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic
Philosophers
LCL
Loeb Classical Library
Lev.
(Bible) Leviticus
Meta.
(Aristotle) Metaphysics
N.E.
(Aristotle) Nicomachean Ethics
Od.
(Homer) Odyssey
Phys.
(Aristotle) Physics
Rep.
(Plato) Republic
SVF
H. von Arnim, ed., Stoicorum veterum fragmenta
Theog.
(Hesiod) Theogony
Tim.
(Plato) Timaeus
xiv
╇ xv
The Anatomy of Myth
xvi
1
Introduction
“The Greeks’ most important legacy is not, as we would like to think,
democracy; it is their mythology.” So begins Mary Lef kowitz’s Book,
Women in Greek Myth.1 The statement rings true. Certainly, when we
think of the ancient Greeks, we think first of their gods and heroes. Their
statues abound in museums, and kitschy plaster copies of them can still
be found in people’s houses and gardens. Movies and animated cartoons
about Hercules or Perseus are regularly released, while novelists and short
story writers continue to probe the ancient stories for their insights into
the human condition. Some of the very great stories, for example, the tale
of Odysseus (Roman Ulysses), cross artistic boundaries. Ulysses’ tale provided the impetus for one of the first operas, Claudio Monteverdi’s Return
of Ulysses, and also for one of the masterpieces of the twentieth-​century
novel, James Joyce’s Ulysses. 2 Like the daimōn Proteus, myths are plastic: they can assume almost any shape at will. And like Proteus, they can’t
be wrestled down. They will wriggle out of any straitjacket you contrive
in order to assume some new form. Myths shape-​shift into paintings on
vases, morph into poems, then take musical form as Pan plies the pipes.
If this does not convince one of the enduring power of Greek and Roman
myths, consider their influence on our language. Our astral bodies from
Mercury to Pluto are named after the Greek gods dressed in Roman garb;
the names have not changed in more than two millennia. The names of several months—​March from Mars, May from Maia, and June from Juno—​reveal
Roman or Greek origins. The French tried to change the month names during
the Revolution and for a time under Napoleon, but to no avail. The Romance
languages, for example, French, retained the names of the Roman gods for
the last four weekdays: mardi (Mars), mercredi (Mercury), jeudi (Jupiter), and
vendredi (Venus), while in English Saturday (< Saturn) displaced the Sabbath
(samedi, sabbato), leaving Sun and Moon as common ground. However, the
planets and the times they generate are not the end of the matter. Consider
our psychological states: jovial (“cheerful, merry”), saturnine (“gloomy”), and
2
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introduction
mercurial (“volatile”), the last named after an element, which in turn got its
name from the god. The heroes come into it as well. A hard job is a Herculean
task, while a fatal flaw is an Achilles heel. All of these names and expressions
are hard wired. They are not going to be replaced any time soon.
Myths take hold of the minds of young people in a way that ordinary
history cannot. Alexander the Great, who was deservedly famous for what
he did, became even more famous for what he didn’t do, which was to travel
in a submarine, sail into the frozen sea, and fly. (These events are recorded
in the pseudo-​histories that grew up after his lifetime.3) Such extraordinary
feats are the stuff of younger children’s fantasies. They incite young imaginations to dream about the possibilities of human life. At a later stage, tales
such as Perseus and Medusa, Odysseus and the Cyclops, and Theseus and the
Minotaur enthrall children’s minds with their focus on bravery and cunning.
Later still, teenagers coming to grips with their own identity are attracted to
darker stories such as Oedipus’s quest for his beginnings, or to the mystery of
the Golden Bough that gained Aeneas entry to the underworld and the enlightenment that resulted from his journey.
These and similar stories continue to play an important role in our current pedagogy. They are valued not so much because they come from great
works of literature as because they are great stories. They excite the imagination as they teach. They function well in the educational systems of our multicultural Western societies because they transcend particular cultures and
value systems. Because the cults to which the Greek gods and heroes were
attached are long dead, their stories rarely give offence. It is little wonder, then,
that children who have never heard of Noah or his ark can tell you all about
Jason and the Argonauts.
What differentiates the Greeks from other earlier civilizations is that they
not only gave us their wonderful narratives, but they also provided the elementary tools for interpreting them. We know that other civilizations, many of
them much older than the Greek, produced rich mythologies. Think of the
Hindus, the Sumerians and Akkadians, and the Egyptians, to name only
some. But their stories were left to speak for themselves—​or at least we have
no evidence to the contrary. If their tales were simply about heroic feats or the
love affairs of human beings, one might reasonably say that nothing more is
needed. But myths are often much more complex, as they introduce different
types of divine beings (e.g., gods, daimones, nature spirits) and describe the
interactions between these beings and humans. Moreover, myths are often
grouped into larger constellations that begin with the origin of the cosmos, the
creation of men and women, and descriptions of an earlier age when things
could happen that cannot happen now. For us, such claims immediately raise
problems of belief. For adults of our time, a horse named Pegasus was no more
able to fly than Santa’s reindeer. Both are fables fit for young children; they are
the stuff of the nursery.
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introduction
3
Our earliest records of disbelief in hallowed stories come from the
sixth century b.c.e. There were two basic critiques of the stories: (1) Many
of them were unbelievable for rational human beings. (2) The traditional
tales misrepresent the true nature of the gods, as they depict them committing theft and adultery and all manner of deception; they also show
them shifting shapes and performing deeds contrary to their natures. On
the one hand, we see skeptical minds that are struck by the disconnect
between a transmitted story and one’s knowledge, based on human experience, of what is possible. On the other, we see developing a new concept of
what a god should be. Far from shunting the gods aside, the earliest Greek
critics of myths sought to incorporate the gods into a new paradigm: one
that allowed for the operation of the divine, but within the constraints of
reason and the laws of nature. For the pioneers of interpretation, myths
were false stories about the gods and heroes.
When we think of myths today, if we think of them as anything other than
fairy tales, fictions, or propaganda, we imagine them as stories that originated
in the distant past—​a phenomenon beyond the reach of historians. Most of
us do not think of them as coming from specific writers. Poetry and literature have authors; myth comes from somewhere else. Myths may belong to
racial memory, or may embody some universal truth. We know, for example,
that a primeval flood myth is not unique to the Book of Genesis. There is a
flood story that comes from Sumeria, is repeated in Akkadian literature, and
is later adapted by the compilers of Genesis. The Greeks also have a flood
story that Ovid recounts as the tale of Deucalion and Pyrrha. 4 It is perhaps
not surprising that these geographically connected cultures have a common
account of a cataclysm that preceded history. It is more surprising that similar
tales arise in North and South American mythology. One might explain all
this as caused by the common experience of mankind distributed throughout
the continents. The stories might have arisen from the destruction caused at
the end of the Ice Age when the glaciers covering much of the earth’s surface
began to melt. But there are other modern explanations. Tales of a destructive
catastrophe brought on by flooding could be rooted in a nightmare of the collective unconscious.
Modern theories of the origins of myth appear to have originated in the
age of exploration. Christian missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, hoping to convert the “primitive peoples” whom their political masters were colonizing, began to collect and translate their stories. Classically
educated scholars quickly realized that a number of these “primitive tales”
bore an uncanny resemblance to the Greek and Roman myths with which
they were acquainted.5 From the German Romantics of the nineteenth century
came the insight that myth must be taken on its own terms and understood for
its unbreakable bond with the development of the human spirit.6 Meanwhile,
the idea of the connectedness of myth across cultures grew alongside the
4
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introduction
development of the new science of anthropology, which focused on the nexus
between primitive religion (ritual) and myth.7
In contrast to modern thinking about myth, most ancient Greek interpreters associated myths with the poems that contained them. Myth making was the business of poets. Homer and Hesiod, the earliest Greek poets
whose works have survived, were widely regarded as the authors of the stories.
Accordingly, they were blamed for deception—​foisting lies on unsuspecting
youth—​or praised for their wisdom. With some important exceptions, the
Greeks saw poets as the inventors of myth. At the start, the Greeks did not
possess the advantage we have of being able to gather myths from different
cultures and different ages and compare them. Had they been able to do this,
they would have realized that their own stories had much in common with
stories from neighboring cultures that were older than their own. Although
willing to attribute much of their wisdom to the Egyptians, the Greeks never
had an inkling that many of their myths were derived from the Middle East
and the Levant.8 We today see poets as shapers of stories that already existed,
and think of myths as having a life of their own. This was not the mainstream
view in ancient Greece. Poems and myths were inseparable; myths are false
stories; therefore, poets are liars. Solon, the famous lawgiver of Athens, was,
I believe, the first to make the accusation in the early sixth century b.c.e.
That poets were the inventors of myths and that they were liars were the
dominant views of the Greeks, not only at the beginning, but well into late
antiquity (down to the sixth century c.e.). However, alternative views were
advanced against both. Regarding the origins of myths, two very different
ideas came on stream. The earlier one came from the sophists of the later fifth
century b.c.e. Some believed that the earliest men lived under terrible conditions, in constant need of food and shelter and protection against those who
were stronger. They argued that myth making reflected this primitive state—​
an idea that is strikingly akin to modern anthropological theories as well as
to Thomas Hobbes’s view of man’s early life as “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Stories about the gods arose collectively through fear or superstition, or from
need, or else were invented by early lawgivers in order to limit the excess of the
strong. In that view, the poets might be regarded as transmitters, rather than
inventors, of myths. Whether one belonged to the “enemies of poetry” group,
or to the more modern-​seeming social theorists, the conclusion about myths
was the same: they could not be taken literally.
An alternative view, developed in the fourth century b.c.e., also relates
the origin of myths to the origin of mankind. Against the idea that human
life advanced from misery to a more prosperous condition, it claimed that
the opposite was true. Ironically, it relied on a myth as its basis. The poet
Hesiod had depicted three quite different conditions of human life deriving
from the myth of initial blessedness: (1) in a “Golden Age” as Zeus’s first
humans; (2) under the benign rule of Zeus’s father, Kronos; or (3) initially
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introduction
5
in close contact with the gods prior to an unfortunate rupture. Related to
this original happiness is the concept of original wisdom. In the beginning the gods revealed an ancient wisdom containing truths about the cosmos and the nature of the divine. This truth was wrapped in myths. As
the myths were passed down through the generations they were corrupted.
The main agents of this corruption were the poets who distorted the divine
truths by inventing fictions about the gods and their actions. The poets still
bore responsibility in the process of myth making, but their contribution
was baneful. It was the job of the philosophers to see through their distortions and reconstruct the ancient wisdom.9
Around the same time as the above theory was being developed, a
radical thesis claiming that the gods were originally men who had done
great deeds to benefit their communities was advanced in a fictional travel
account called Sacred Scripture. Its author was a certain Euhemerus, about
whom little is known. Euhemerus claimed that he learned on his voyage
that the gods were only men who were worshipped as gods after their death.
He reported that the deeds of Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus were inscribed
on a golden column. Accordingly, myths are stories that arise from the cult
of heroes.
Finally, there is the theory that the ancient poets, not the gods, invented
the myths, but did not tell lies. Rather, they used myths to conceal the deep
cosmological and spiritual truths that were available to them. This “defense
of poetry” can be traced to an early date (sixth century b.c.e.), but was more
widely accepted in the centuries after Christ. In that view the poets were philosophers who communicated deep truths in the form of fables. Thus, the
poets did not distort “the ancient wisdom,” but preserved it. Some adherents of
this idea thought that the poets deliberately concealed their truths so that they
would not be profaned by the masses, while leaving them accessible to those
with deep understanding.10
We might summarize these four theories of myth origins as follows:
I. Authorship Model
A. Poets as Liars
B. Poets as Sages
II. “Evolutionary” Model
A. Needs of Primitive Man
B. Cult of the Heroes
III. “Revelation” Model
In terms of chronology, the authorship model is the oldest, and begins with I.A.
It is also the most enduring of the models, with I.B becoming predominant in
the early Christian era. The “evolutionary” model is the child of the fifth century b.c.e., a model that received new impetus from the theory of Euhemerus
6
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introduction
in the third century. It fits well with the paradigm of physis (nature), as it sees
myth as a natural development appropriate to the challenging conditions of
the earliest humans. The Roman poet Lucretius, who also saw myths as arising out of the abject conditions of human origins, attributed ideas about gods
and their attributes to terrifying dreams.11 The “revelation” model that arose
in the following century might be understood as a reaction to the pessimistic
picture of the human condition sketched by the “evolutionists.” It is a good
fit for the paradigm of theos (god). In the fourth century three of the major
philosophical schools adopted some form of “creationism” (a broad generalization that include theories that god had either a direct or an indirect role in
the creation of the world and humans). Accordingly, a benevolent god or gods
revealed his wisdom to mankind in the form of myths at the beginning of
human existence.
The criticism and interpretation of myth was begun by the early cosmologists and philosophers and quickly became their monopoly. The thinkers of the sixth and fifth centuries were interested primarily in cosmology
(the origin and makeup of the universe) and theology (the nature of god or
the divine). They were also very much concerned with the question of how
god was related to nature. The writings of the poets provided the catalysts for
analyzing these questions. As a result, the study of myth stayed focused on
the origins of things and their makeup. Myths were worth studying for what
they might potentially yield for understanding these big issues. As intellectual
interests broadened into the examination of human society and individual psychology, it was again the philosophers who made them their property. When
philosophers in later antiquity undertook to classify myths, they treated them,
unsurprisingly, as types of philosophical fable. All this had a positive side: the
philosophers deserve much of the credit for saving myths from the attacks of
critics and censors by explaining them as disguised philosophy.12 This defense
proved to be especially valuable in the early Christian and medieval eras.
The natural philosophers were followed by the earliest historians. Some
of these, like Hecataeus, also pursued mathematical and philosophical interests. (In the history of Greek thought, multidisciplinarity preceded specialization.) The historians, too, were imbued with the spirit of Greek skepticism
and regarded many popular beliefs as foolish. When they analyzed accounts of
the deeds of great heroes, or the interactions of gods and men, they invariably
posed the question of whether what was described was possible according to
natural criteria. Because humans could do only what was humanly possible,
and gods could do only what conformed to nature, many stories were declared
to be unbelievable.13
The Greeks knew what myths were, but they had no single word for
“myth.” The closest to it was muthos (the origin of our word “myth”). However,
Greek muthos had far too many meanings to be useful as a descriptor of what
we mean by “myth” in the general sense. It could mean any kind of talk or
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introduction
7
conversation, the subject matter of a conversation, design or purpose, and, of
course, a story. Thus it was no more useful than logos, which had a similar,
perhaps even broader, range of meanings. A third term, plasma, was also used
to indicate clearly that a story was contrived, i.e., fictitious.
The Greeks were also late in developing narrative theory. They developed a sophisticated terminology for distinguishing genres of literature (epic,
lyric, tragedy, comedy, etc.), but took little or no interest in distinguishing one
kind of story from another. The earliest writers on myth did not distinguish
between a set allegory within an epic, an Aesopian fable, or a philosophical
myth composed to illustrate a philosophical doctrine. These distinctions had
to await the early fifth century c.e., when Macrobius, a philosopher and literary
theorist, addressing the question of the value of myths for teaching philosophy, proposed a division of fable into the following: (1) stories filled with the
imaginary doings of lovers (comic plays and novels or “romances”); (2a) fictitious tales such as the stories of Aesop that call the reader’s attention to kinds
of virtue; (2b) the fabulous narrative (narratio fabulosa), which under a cover
of fiction contains real truth. His examples of the last (and best) type include
stories of the gods by Hesiod and Orpheus,14 and the mystical teachings of
the Pythagoreans.15 All is directed to the usefulness of myth for philosophy
without any serious examination of the narrative structure of the different
types of story.
The above may help to explain why the Greeks did not consider myth a
category of thought that could be investigated. Although they were very interested in the origin and meaning of myths, they never asked the basic question, “What is myth?” Moderns have asked this question many times, but no
answer has appeared yet that is to everyone’s satisfaction. Moderns have also
tried to differentiate myth from such categories as religion and literature; such
attempts were rare among Greek thinkers. Moderns also ask, “How does myth
function in particular societies?”16 —​another question that did not occur to the
Greeks, except to those who saw myths as instruments of social control. And
while some Greeks were aware of religious and cultural similarities and differences between themselves and other peoples, they rarely noted similarities
between stories. They might have observed, for instance, the close narrative
similarities between the doings of Hercules and the biblical Samson, had they
been interested in the stories of their neighbors.17 However, they did question
their own myths and they did interpret them.
We do not mean to claim that the Greeks were the first people on the planet
to question or disbelieve their myths. It is hard to think that the Babylonian
astronomers who could plot the course of the planets and divide the circle into
360 degrees believed that humans were created out of the carcass of a monster slain by a god, as claimed in the “Babylonian Creation Story.” It is just as
difficult to think that the Egyptian architects, who knew enough geometry to
create the enormous pyramids that stand to this day, believed that Isis literally
8
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gathered the body bits of the dismembered Osiris, put them back together,
and restored him to life. There were doubtless always those who disbelieved
myths, even those that were part of a people’s most sacred tenets of faith. Yet
if these moments of disbelief were ever recorded, the documents have been
lost. So much (too much) history is based on the fate of books. We should
keep in mind that the Greeks learned much from the surrounding peoples
whose civilizations were much older. They adapted the alphabet invented by
the Phoenicians. They must surely have learned some geometry from the
Egyptians, even if we have only the writings of Pythagoras and Euclid. The
same would apply to the Babylonians as a source for Greek astronomy, even
though we must depend on Hipparchus and Ptolemy for our knowledge of
ancient astronomy. But if they learned skepticism from their neighbors, no
document has surfaced to prove it.
Given this gap in our knowledge, we must rely on the Greeks to teach
us about the earliest questioning of traditional myths, and more importantly,
about how they found ways of understanding them so that they accorded with
new hypotheses about the cosmos. Because the Greeks experienced a long
period of illiteracy after the Mycenaean Age, we know next to nothing about
their ways of thinking about myth until the appearance of written versions
of Homer and Hesiod in the sixth century b.c.e. This is not to suggest that
literature did not exist in oral form in “Dark Age” Greece before writing was
rediscovered, probably in the eighth century c.e. Indeed, a great deal of work
has been done on the oral composition and oral transmission of literature.18
We even have evidence for oral interpretation of Homer’s poems from Plato’s
dialogue Ion.19 Unfortunately, Plato does not allow Ion to speak his interpretations of Homer, so we have no idea what they were like.
For all practical purposes, poetry and criticism appeared almost simultaneously in written form. At that point, the criticism and interpretation of literature became a public matter. Critiques were written and shared and became
part of the public domain. A writer could relay his thoughts on a poet’s teaching from his home in, say, Ephesus (western Turkey) to a friend in Sicily or
southern Italy. A common language, literacy, and navigation made the sharing
of ideas a real possibility in the far-​flung colonies of the Greeks. But written
communication was not simply a private matter between friends. The spread
of literacy soon led to the notion of publication: making one’s views public and
accepting the consequences.
The beginnings of public criticism occurred roughly at the same time as
the earliest authoritative texts came to be in a fixed written form. This may be
pure coincidence, since the earliest expressions of critical opinion are couched
in very general terms and might be based on oral reception. Yet it is interesting that the works of Homer were published in versions commissioned by
political authority at about the same time as the earliest attacks on Homer’s
veracity and moral values were issued. Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, who
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9
ruled between 560 and 527 b.c.e., is credited with the role of patron of an
“edition,” which was doubtless already far removed from the “original.” Also
around the middle of the sixth century or not much later, Xenophanes of
Colophon and Pythagoras of Samos, whom we shall meet later in this book,
issued their attacks on Homer and Hesiod. Only a short time later Theagenes
of Rhegium rose to Homer’s defence by proposing that his works be interpreted allegorically.
We know virtually nothing about conditions surrounding freedom of
expression in the different parts of Greece in the sixth century. We have no
evidence of the “heresy trials,” i.e., the charges of atheism or impiety that were
fairly common in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. However, the
fact that a critic of the poets such as Pythagoras left his respective homeland
points to the possibility that he incurred public disfavor, if not official censure.
The two events, of course, may not have been connected. It is just as likely he
was attracted by patronage offered by the rulers of the southern Italian town to
which he migrated. We shall probably never know for certain. What is certain
is that public criticism of the most authoritative texts of ancient Greece was
under way.
The initial attacks on the early poets were harsh. However, because the
works of Homer and Hesiod had long been known (Homer doubtless in oral
form) and were regarded by many as foundational, a poets’ defense league
quickly sprouted up. There was simply too much at stake to allow them to be
discarded. Hesiod was respected for his attempts at explaining the origins of
the cosmos, and Homer’s saga of the Trojan War and its aftermath constituted
all that the Greeks had that could tell them about their early history. The poets
had to be saved at all costs.
The main objective of practically all Greek critics was to determine whether
a work or part of a work was true or not. (This was thought of as completely
different from determining whether a work of literature was beautiful or not—​
that was the business of grammarians and rhetoricians.) Interpretation in
antiquity took various forms, but its chief aim remained constant: to establish
the truth of a text. If a myth or group of myths could not be certified as literally
true, that is, if the events they mention could not have happened as described,
then could they be true in some other way? The question opened doors for
several kinds of speculation, and the solutions given depended on the kinds
of study in which critics were engaged (we cannot yet refer to these studies
as disciplines). The early cosmologists looked for hidden messages regarding
the origins of the universe; philosophers looked for teachings about the divine
or about the soul; historians looked for “kernels of truth” regarding the past.
Practically all resorted to nonliteral interpretations of the poems.
Interpretations also shifted with the times. In the nearly two centuries
before Plato, thinkers concentrated on nature (physis). What were things made
of? Was there a single primary substance that explained everything, or were
10
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introduction
there several? How did the universe come into being? Was it always there, and
will it always be, or did it have a specific origin, and if so, was it made by a god
(theos)? While there was much disagreement about the primary stuff of being,
there was a general consensus about the origin of the universe. It was always
there (because nothing can come from nothing), and it always will be. It was
not made by any god, though god or gods could play a role in its governance—​
at least for some thinkers. I refer to this in later chapters as “the paradigm of
physis.” Homer and Hesiod (and any other poetic voice) had to be made to fit
into this paradigm.
In the fourth century, theism emerged as the dominant theme of philosophy and cosmology. It is unmistakable in Plato’s late work Timaeus, Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, and the earliest writings of the Stoic School, which arose around
300 b.c.e.. The gods, or God, were rescued from their servitude to physis.
They were now able to create, regulate, and animate the universe. Here we
witness a major paradigmatic shift from nature to god, from physis to theos. In
one particular, Aristotle was the most revolutionary of all the theists. Unlike
Plato and the Stoics, whose theological language vacillated between “god” and
“gods,” Aristotle spoke of a single God who set the cosmos in motion. But
Plato was the real game changer. Although previous thinkers may have hinted
at an immaterial substance (i.e., something that exists that contains no matter), Plato posited an entire world that can be known by the mind alone, and
it exists not just in the mind but also in reality. It is eternal and unchanging, standing in contrast to the changing insubstantial world of matter that is
always in flux. Similarly, humans are composed of two disparate things: matter, which is the stuff our bodies are made of, and some kind of nonmaterial
essence, from which our souls are made. All things material are born, grow,
die, and decay. But whatever is made of the stuff of souls is eternal. Our individual souls always were and always will be, even though our bodies perish
and decay. While the importance of this idea to the development of Christian
theology is obvious, its relevance to the history of interpretation was also great,
as we shall see.
In this book we begin and end with the methods of the ancient Greeks for
interpreting their own myths. The details of these methods and their development will be explored fully in the following chapters. However, if the methods devised had had no other application than to ancient literature, ancient
exegesis (a Greek term for “interpretation”) would be of significance today
mainly to students of literary theory. What gives the methods much greater
importance is that Greek ways of understanding Homer and Hesiod’s myths
were adopted first by Jews, then Christians, and applied to the interpretation
of the Sacred Scriptures. They were incorporated into books on “How to Read
the Bible” by the Jewish philosopher Philo and by Christian thinkers such as
Origen and Augustine. The tradition of reading the Bible with an eye to more
than one layer of meaning became firmly embedded in the scriptural exegesis
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embraced by Christians in antiquity and transmitted to the Western Middle
Ages, surviving to the Reformation and well beyond.
A double benefit resulted from this appropriation. First, Holy Writ was
spared the deadening hand of literalism. From the earliest times the Christian
fathers realized that there were many passages in scripture that could be taken
literally only at the expense of reason. They sought for figurative meanings in
these passages and encouraged others to do so. Biblical texts were seen as multilayered, with meaning to be found on several levels. This is not to argue that
there were no literalists among ancient and medieval biblical exegetes, or that
there was no one who insisted on conserving the letter of the text while allowing other interpretations. But we have to thank Philo and Origen, who learned
their exegesis from the pagan Greeks, for preventing Christianity from becoming “a religion of the book” in the oppressive sense of that term. Whatever the
source of the biblical literalism that flourishes in parts of America today, its
roots are not to be found in the early Christian centuries, or in the Catholic
Middle Ages.
The continuity of ancient interpretative methods brought a second boon
to the world of letters. When the pagan classics came under challenge in some
quarters during the Middle Ages, ways of interpreting them figuratively were
revived and used in the West for defending the secular books written in Latin.
These defenses were only occasionally needed for pagan philosophical works,
but were often vital for the poems that preserved the pagan myths—​especially
myths of an erotic nature. Although many of these interpretations strike us
today as naive, we are as much in debt to the commentators as we are to the
scribes who copied out the poems. These interpreters played a crucial role in
preserving the pagan classics that we have today.
In presenting my study of the origins and growth of the public interpretation of myth, I have deliberately avoided a schematic approach. Although I try to
describe the kinds of mental operations involved in the different ways of understanding myths, I am conscious of both their ambiguity and their interrelatedness. I am also aware that readers who know very little about classical culture, or
are just beginning their studies, require context. Accordingly, the chapters follow
a rough chronology as far as possible. I have also included chapters (or sections
thereof) on the poems of Homer and Hesiod, ideas of authority and inspiration,
changing notions about nature and god, modes of belief and skepticism, the link
between poetry and myth, theories about the origin of myths, the interrelationship among modes of interpretation, and the influence of these modes on Jewish
and early Christian thought. Out of these various themes I have tried to create
a narrative that binds the leitmotiv of interpretation with the themes of Greek
literature, religion, and philosophy. My hope is that readers will appreciate the
importance of these early public experiments in the interpretation of authoritative texts, and understand how they contributed to the making of the open
intellectual climate in which we are fortunate to live.
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13
1
The Paradigm of the Poets
Our subject is Greek myth, but it will be helpful here to begin with some generalizations about how myths are organized into the books that play a vital role
in forming their societies. We shall therefore look briefly at the role of such
books in other ancient societies to see what they tell us about social foundations. Many ancient societies reserved a special place for their most authoritative texts. These were the books that contained and sanctified, so to speak, the
dominant ideas and beliefs of a given society—​or at least of its elite. The sum
of these ideas and beliefs might be termed “the paradigm”—​the set of guidelines into which beliefs and social practices must fit. These books, or “great
codes,”1 were written or handed down by lawgivers or sages whose alleged
lifespan marked the beginning of the validity of the paradigm.
The biblical Moses epitomizes this type of figure. He handed down
the Ten Commandments given to him by God. Both Jews and Christians
believed that Moses was at the same time the author of the Torah, the first
five books of the Jewish Bible, which the Greek Jews and Christians call
the Pentateuch. These five books are also known as “the Law” (though the
Hebrew word Torah means “teaching”). They contain not only the law codes
that regulated so many details of behavior, but also a description of the origin of the cosmos, the human race, and the people marked out as God’s chosen. Most importantly, they establish Yahweh as the one and only god of the
Jews. These books also report the earliest history of this special people. No
limit—​no “sunset law”—​is placed on the validity of the paradigm sanctioned
by these writings. The paradigm was meant to be accepted forever by the
people for whom it was intended. The collection of the five books is thought
by scholars to have been made in the reign of King David, ca. 1000–​962
b.c.e. But it is treated as timeless. To believers, the Torah was always there
and always will be.
The Torah is by no means unique in presenting a description of origins, a
law code or codes, and the beginnings of a national history. We find a similar
group of texts in the older civilization of the Babylonians. Although the books
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were never brought together into a collection such as the Torah, Babylonian
sages were responsible for the poem known as the Enuma Elish (“When
on High”) and the law codes attributed to King Hammurabi (ca. 1951–​1913
b.c.e.). Like the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Torah, the Enuma Elish
describes the origins of the cosmos, the creation of humans, and the emergence of the great god Marduk, who will be the god of the people forever. The
Babylonians also appropriated and translated the even more ancient Sumerian
epic called Gilgamesh, which describes the transition of the human condition
from a natural to a civilized state, sets the limit of human life, and portrays the
fate of the “person” after death. There are glimpses of early national history
in the episode of Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu’s expedition into the
land of cedars, where the heroes cut down wood and bring it back to ornament
their temples.
Well after the Babylonians and Jews had created their foundational literature, the Greeks created theirs in the eighth century b.c.e. Not all of it was
immediately set down in writing. Although the Greeks had known literacy
at an earlier stage,2 this skill was lost for centuries after the destruction of
the Mycenean citadels ca. 1200 b.c.e. It is now thought that the Iliad and the
Odyssey, the two great poems attributed to Homer, were composed orally, or
else orally with the aid of writing. Nothing is known for certain about the
identity of this poet, and a number of scholars today believe that the two epic
works named were written by separate poets. Two other important poems,
the Theogony (“Origin of the Gods”) and Works and Days, were composed
by Hesiod, probably toward the end of the eighth century. This poet identifies himself and provides autobiographical notes in the Works and Days. As
Hesiod’s poetry displays fewer of the hallmarks of oral composition, it is likely
that he composed by writing.
Among them, the four poems cover many of the same topics included in
the Torah and the Babylonian material, and modern scholars have detected
a number of their influences on the Greek works, particularly with regard to
cosmology.3 The Theogony in particular shows Eastern influence, as it begins
with the creation of the natural world, treats the creation of women as an afterthought on the part of the gods (compare the creation of Eve in Genesis), portrays the loss of favor with the gods (compare the Garden of Eden story in
Genesis), describes a fierce battle between the older and younger generations
of gods (compare Marduk’s revolt against Tiamat in the Enuma Elish), and
traces the ascent of the great god Zeus, who will rule forever as king of gods
and men (compare Marduk’s rise to power in the Enuma Elish). Some of the
gaps that occur in Theogony are filled in by Works and Days, notably the creation of mankind as a complete species (implied in the Greek anthrōpōn, “of
humans,” line 109) and the theme of a golden age followed by steady decline
due to the worsening of human morals (the “Fall of Man” as described in
Genesis).
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the par adigm of the poets
15
For the early history of the Greek peoples, one has to turn to Homer.
Compared to Genesis, Homer’s Iliad encloses a much more compressed time
period. Genesis offers a sweeping account of history from the creation of the
first man and woman down to the flood, followed by the division of mankind into three races through the three sons of Noah. The story then becomes
the Jewish story when it introduces the narrative of Abraham and his descendants, their covenant with the one God, and their migration into Egypt. The
Iliad, on the other hand, recounts only the events of the last year of the Trojan
War, although it introduces much additional material in the form of genealogies and the local origins of the different Greek warriors who took part in the
war. The Odyssey treats the (mis-​)fortunes of the Greek heroes returning from
Troy. The Iliad came to be perceived as the epic of national unity because it
portrays the disparate tribes of the Greeks united in a single purpose.
In Homer’s day there was no Greek nation—​and there was not to be anything like a “national” entity until four centuries later, when Alexander the
Great briefly united “Hellenes,” the name for the peoples speaking different
Greek dialects. (From Hesiod’s time on, the name “Hellene” came to signify
the entire Greek-​speaking population.) In Homer’s story, all these independent
peoples as well as people from the Aegean Islands united in a single cause to
rescue Helen, the beautiful Mycenean princess who had been abducted by
Paris, the playboy scion of the king of Troy.
The Trojan War (whether fact or legend) was always seen as the true
beginning of Greek history. It marked the start of a people’s collective sense
of themselves in much the same way as the exodus out of Egypt was the true
start of Jewish history, the French Revolution initiated a collective “classless”
ideal of Frenchness, or the War of Independence created a sense of American
identity from which there was no longer any turning back. All these peoples
experienced other wars—​some triumphant, others tragic—​but none of them
could claim the status as foundational. The Greeks acknowledged heroes who
lived before the Trojan War. Heracles and Theseus were the greatest of these;
indeed, Theseus was even given the role of first admiral of the Athenian navy
by later historians (odd as this may seem). But the Trojan War was the watershed; it was the beginning of history. What happened before that time was
obscured by haze.
And so Homer was made the first Greek historian. But he also came
to be perceived as a theologian. 4 Foremost, perhaps, is the fact that Homer
attributed the victorious outcome of the Trojan War to the will of Zeus.
Zeus was no longer “first among equals,” but the supreme god, as Hesiod
also depicted him. Zeus was able to see through and thwart the intrigues
of the other gods who sought to undermine his plan to engineer a Greek
victory at Troy. His terrible threat aimed at disobedient gods (Il. 8, 13–​27)
underscores Homer’s position perfectly. They will be hurled into Tartarus,
whose depth below the earth is as great as Mount Olympus’s height above
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it. The will of Zeus acknowledged no limitation except, perhaps, that of fate.
(Homer is a little muddy on this point, because in some passages he shows
the gods as subject to fate, but in one famous passage he depicts Zeus as
the author of it.5)
We also learn much from Homer about the nature of the gods in both the
Iliad and the Odyssey. Their most important characteristic is their immortality. This is attributed to the special quality of their blood substitute, which is
called ichor, and their special diet, which is composed of nectar for their drink
and ambrosia for their food. (The word ambrosia means “immortality.”) They
can, however, be injured and suffer pain. The gods also have special powers.
They can shift their shape, fly, pass through solid walls, appear to mortals in
dreams and visions, move extremely quickly from one spot to another, deflect
arrows and spears, and much else. They live a happy life on the peak of Mount
Olympus, ever feasting and drinking and making love to their legitimate
partners—​at least while on the premises.
Apart from being immortal and stronger, smarter, and more beautiful
than humans, they are like them in all other respects.6 Not only are their bodies those of glorified humans (just look at the ancient statues), but their characters also have human traits, particularly the bad ones. When not at home
under the watchful eye of their lawful spouses, they fly about the earth, engaging in romantic liaisons with humans or stirring them up. Both hetero-​and
homosexual love affairs between gods and mortals are rife, and some female
deities have their share of the fun as well as the males. However, a good many
of these liaisons are undertaken not just for fun, but also with the intent of creating great heroes. The heroes are the crucial link between gods and mortals.
Being part mortal, part god, they complete the chain of being, for the world
would be an utterly desolate place without heroes to remind us of our own
spark of divinity.
There is nothing specifically Greek about this type of interbreeding. It
was a feature of Babylonian mythology and noted famously in a passage in
Gen. 6:4: “The Nephilim [“giants”] were on the earth in those days—​and also
afterward—​when the sons of God went into the daughters of humans, who
bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of
renown.” The Jewish narrative is linked to God’s placing a limit on life of
120 years. In the Greek paradigm the supernatural heroes who would correspond to the biblical “warriors of renown” had long died out or else, like
Heracles, had been granted immortality. Such heroes will not be seen again.
Even the heroic fighters of the Trojan War were utterly human; they belonged
to history, not legend, or so it was deeply believed. The gigantic “warriors of
renown” of the Bible remind us of the heroes mentioned by Nestor in the
Iliad 7; their powers vastly exceeded those of even the bravest and strongest
fighters on the Trojan expedition. But they lived and fought before the dawn
of history.
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the par adigm of the poets
17
The Trojan War marked the watershed between myth and history, at least
to the Greek mind. On this side of the watershed, time flows in a workaday sort
of way, in which everything happens more or less predictably. Events unfold
according to the laws of cause and effect. Every being has its peculiar nature,
and this does not change except by natural means. People are born, grow old,
and die. They can neither be rejuvenated when old nor resurrected once dead.
People cannot live under water (therefore, nymphs or mermaids cannot exist),
and fish cannot live on land. Animals do not talk. Time itself moves in only
one direction and can be measured in a predictable way; it cannot be stopped
or reversed. On the other side of the temporal watershed, almost anything
can happen. People can live for indefinitely long periods, animals can talk,
and gods and humans can communicate with one another directly, as they
do in Hesiod’s description of a banquet attended by Zeus and humans (lines
535–​41). For Jews and Christians, it was the time when God spoke directly to
Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8ff.). Afterward people had to rely on prophets, oracles,
or dream interpreters to learn the mind of the gods. It is true, of course, that
Homer depicted direct interactions between gods and a few highly favored
mortals, but for the great mass of humanity, including kings and prophets,
the gods made their wishes known through dreams and oracles, or appeared
in disguise.
The Homer of the Iliad shows restraint in his use of miraculous or supernatural motifs. He concentrates chiefly on the events of the war and the interaction among the heroes. This is not to say there are no divine interventions: The
nymph Thetis conceals Achilles in a watery place to keep him out of the war;
Aphrodite intervenes in battle to save her son Aeneas and suffers a wound for
her pains. The gods sometimes guide the spears and arrows of their favorite
mortals, but the heroes themselves, powerful and skillful as they may be, wage
battle by natural means. Unlike “pre-​historic” heroes such as Perseus, they
have no magic weapons or armor and possess no flying horses, nor can they fly
or make themselves invisible. When they cannot save themselves, they require
the aid of the gods.
The Odyssey is less restrained in respect of the supernatural, but even
there most of the strange happenings are attributable to the gods. In that
tale the war is already finished and the heroes are on their way home. This was
the perfect opportunity for a poet to concentrate on an individual hero and
his adventures at sea. Anything can happen on a voyage, and many strange
things do. The hero Odysseus engages in lengthy love affairs with island goddesses. At the end of his dalliance with the goddess Calypso he rejects her offer
of immortality for the simple pleasure of returning home to his dear wife.
The second liaison is with the witchlike Circe, who transforms his crew into
swine, but Odysseus manages to restore them with the magic plant “moly,”
which Hermes gave him. In another episode the hero gains access to the
shades of the underworld (a feat allowed only to the heroes on the other side
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of the temporal threshold, Orpheus, Heracles, and Theseus).8 There he sees
and converses with the shades of departed heroes, including Achilles; he also
receives detailed advice as to how to handle his homecoming.
Odysseus’s journey to the edge of the underworld or Hades (book 11) surely
reinforced Homer’s reputation as a theologian, that is, an expert on all things
supernatural. The poet’s picture of existence after death is a cheerless one,
almost as bleak as that found in Gilgamesh. Hades offers neither rewards for
heroism nor punishment for sin. Only the worst of the “pre-​historical” offenders against Zeus—​Tantalus, Tityus, and Sisyphus—​undergo punishment.
Minos, the judge of the underworld, is there to assign their fates. The “souls,”
or “shades,” enclosed in Hades are a sorry lot who possess only a dim consciousness.9 However, they can be revived temporarily and made to speak by
drinking from a pool of sacrificial blood. The effects last only for a short time
before the shades revert to their habitual stupor.
The main paradigm of the afterlife offered by Homer in book 11 of the
Odyssey can be supplemented by his account in book 24 and in Iliad book 8, as
well as Hesiod’s description of Tartarus in the Theogony. This is where Zeus
imprisoned the enemy Titans in the battle of the gods. Both poets agree that
Tartarus is in the deepest part of the earth, and Hesiod adds the information
that it lies at the very end of the world and offers no means of exit. Both poets
speak of “brazen gates” or doors. The Elysian Fields, which is the abode of the
virtuous souls in later Greek and Roman thought, receives a passing mention at Od. 4, 563ff. It has been identified with the “Isles of the Blest,” where
virtuous souls enjoy a life of ease and tranquility.10 Homer places Helen and
her husband, Menelaus, in that setting. Menelaus gets in, while more famous
heroes like Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax endure the lot of ordinary mortals in Hades. Menelaus’s good fortune was most likely due to Helen’s divine
connections.
Homer’s and Hesiod’s works together gave the Greeks not only their
paradigms of history and theology, but also their concepts of geography
and cosmography. The earth is flat and shaped like a disc. The three known
continents—​Europe, Asia, and Africa—​are like a huge island surrounded by
the stream of Ocean.11 The possibly genuine Hesiodic poem Shield of Heracles
describes the border of the shield: “And around the rim Ocean was flowing,
with a full stream as it seemed, and enclosed all the cunning work of the
shield” (lines 314–​15). Ocean itself is described as “boundless,” and the earliest poets did not seem concerned with the problem of how the water was
prevented from flowing over the edges.12 Colchis (of Argonauts fame) marked
the eastern edge of the known world, while Elysium (Homer’s equivalent of
Hesiod’s “Isles of the Blest”) marked the western. The entrance to the underworld (Hades) was at the northern limit of the earth, and Odysseus had to pass
through Ocean to reach it (Od. 10, 507). In between these places that marked
the limits between the known and unknown worlds lay the familiar islands of
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19
the Mediterranean and Aegean. The challenge of reconciling the known world
with Homer’s mythical isles still exercised the ingenuity of the geographer
Strabo in the first century b.c.e.
For the origins of the cosmos we must turn primarily to Hesiod’s great
Theogony. The title of the work means “Origin of the Gods,” but the poet seeks
to explain much else: the earliest state of the cosmos; the origin of natural
features such as sun and moon, mountains and rivers; and the creation of
women. It might be argued that Hesiod’s cosmological assertions provided a
starting point for all further Greek speculation about the universe.
The first line of Hesiod’s account of the beginnings of the cosmos (line
116) has been a source of confusion. The poet tells us that the very first thing
that came into being was Chaos. For moderns, “chaos” means a “jumble” or
“confusion,” or generally, “a state of disorder.” Thus we might be inclined to
think that the earliest state of the cosmos consisted of confused objects or matter that required some extraneous force to bring order to them. This assumption is almost certainly wrong. The basic meaning of the Greek word chaos is a
“void,” or “gap.” Thus, Hesiod’s chaos is the space in which objects can move.
The next two things “to happen” were earth and erŌs (sexual desire). These
events were followed by the genesis out of the void of darkness and night.
Counterintuitively, it seems, the aether (light) and day were generated from
the union of darkness and night. Earth unaided produced Sky to “cover her”
on all sides; she also produced the mountains and seas on her own. After this
she generated things through union with Sky, including great Ocean itself.
We need not pursue the details of creation further, but one more episode
of the story will be important for what follows in this book. Ouranos (sky)
and Gaia (earth) produced a number of children, including the Titans and
various monsters. But Ouranos became jealous of his children and crammed
them into the bowels of Gaia, causing her great distress. She conspired with
her son, the Titan Kronos, to liberate her and the children by cutting off the
testicles of Ouranos with a steel sickle at the very moment when Ouranos was
making love to Gaia. The plot was successful, and the children were liberated.
A new goddess, Aphrodite, was created from the foam issuing from Ouranos’s
testicles, and the avenging Furies were created from their blood. Hesiod at
this point abandons his bloody tale to tell us about Aphrodite and her wonderful powers. On the cosmological level, however, earth and sky are once again
separated, and there is space between them in which other things can move.
Here we find a parallel with the cosmology of Gen. 1:7, which describes the
separation of the waters above the vault of heaven from the waters below.
What distinguishes the Theogony from Genesis, however, is its “evolutionist” approach to origins. The first things simply “come into being”—​they are
generated, but there is no mention of a generator or creator. From these first
beings, others are generated over time. In a line widely regarded as spurious
(118), Chaos, Gaia, and Eros are described as immortal and as inhabitants of
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Olympus, but there is nothing very godlike about them. Instead, they appear to
be largely unconscious beings (rather like the watery Apsu and Tiamat in the
Enuma Elish). It is in the next generation—​the generation of the Titans—​that a
sense of plan and purpose can be glimpsed. They have a hint of divinity about
them, but the male Titans, at any rate, are mostly large and brutish, with little
regard for anything beyond their own needs. The Olympian gods—​the gods
we recognize from Homer—​do not come into existence until the third generation. They mark the end of evolution. The offspring they generate are like
themselves. With the ascent of Zeus to supreme rulership, the notions of law
(Themis) and justice (Dikē) enter the world. The combination of unmatchable
physical power coupled with stunning intellectual gifts created a divine being
beyond which it was not possible to conceive a greater.
One of the most arresting ideas in Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion
is that if God exists, he, she, or it must come at the end of the evolutionary
process.13 To theists and atheists alike, such a thought appears to be counterintuitive. Either God was there at the start of the world, or doesn’t exist at all—​in
which case the origin of the world requires a different explanation. But each
of these alternatives would have been abhorrent to Hesiod. For him, a world
without gods was unthinkable. But gods had to represent the apex of being
(and thus the epitome of physical power and rationality), and therefore come
at the end of the evolutionary process. However, as they were generated naturally (that is, from the Titans in the ordinary way), they belonged to nature. As
such, they could not have created the world—​they were not even around when
the world happened. This evolutionist pattern was to set the paradigm for the
early Greek physical philosophers from the late seventh to the end of the fifth
century, as we shall see in c­ hapter 3.
At odds with Hesiod’s account of the origin of the world and the gods is his
depiction of the beginnings of men and women. Like the authors of Genesis,
who give two accounts of the creation of humans, the first being their creation
as a complete species (Gen. 1:27), the second describing separate creations
of male and female (Gen. 2:7, 20–​24), Hesiod does the same. In Works and
Days (lines 109ff.) Hesiod describes the creation of the complete species by the
Olympian gods at the time when Kronos was reigning in heaven. This was a
golden race and it lived in a kind of paradise where all was provided. Humans
lived free from every toil and care, always in a state of merriment—​like the
gods themselves. Their strength never failed them, and when they died (for
they were created mortal), “it was as though they were overcome with sleep”
(line 116). Importantly, they were “loved by the blessed gods” (line 119). They
were followed by four more generations, each worse than the last except for the
fourth generation, which raised up the heroes who fought at Troy.
An important shift came with the third generation. By then Zeus was
king of heaven, so he took on the creative task himself, putting an end to the
second generation and creating the next three by himself. Unlike the first two
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the par adigm of the poets
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generations under Kronos, which were peaceable but indolent, the generations
made by Zeus were all addicted to war and violence, though the fourth generation is described as noble because it produced the Greek heroes.
In the Theogony Hesiod presents an entirely different story. Males already
existed without any explanation of how they came to be.14 Because the Titan
Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to men, Zeus created a beautiful
young woman as “the first of the race of women and female kind: of her is the
deadly race and tribe of women living amongst mortal men [andrasi, ‘males’]
to their great trouble.”15 The story of the first female’s creation is told in greater
detail in Works and Days, where she is given the name Pandora, “the recipient of every gift” (lines 80–​81). This is followed by the well-​known fable of
Pandora’s box, in which evils enter the world through the curiosity of a female.
It is tempting to dwell on the details of Hesiod’s account of the origin of
humans and their fall from favor and that of Genesis. But what is important
for our narrative is that Hesiod departed from his evolutionist explanation of
origins and change and introduced creationism. In Works and Days the gods
or Zeus alone made each new race, then put it away. (The last generation,
the tribe of iron, will also perish, according to Hesiod’s prophesy.) In both
the Theogony and Works and Days it was Zeus who ordered the creation of
woman, who was manufactured, so to speak, by Hephaestus with the help of
Athena. Why were humans not a part of the evolutionary process? Why were
they not simply born out of the earth like some other beings, or else procreated in the usual way by the gods? An attempt at that explanation is given in a
separate myth of the “Sown Men,” who sprang up from dragon’s teeth planted
in the earth; but as soon as they appeared they set to fighting and killed one
another. Like trees planted outside their usual environment, they didn’t take
root. Presumably, humans cannot be generated in the usual natural ways,
because they are not fully part of nature. The problem for Hesiod was that the
Olympian gods were the last generation to arise through generation. When the
gods had intercourse with each other, they could produce only other gods—​
even if they sometimes produced them in unorthodox ways, as Zeus did when
he generated Athena from his head.
The two Hesiodic myths of the creation of humans constitute an etiology of human apartheid. Humans are neither gods nor part of nature. Their
weakness and mortality separate them from the first, their exceptional reasoning power from the second. Humans are the only things that the gods created, as opposed to generated. Pandora in the version given in Works and Days
was made by the craftsman Hephaestus out of earth and water, just as Adam,
the first man, was fashioned out of moistened earth by God in Gen. 2:6–​7.
Thus humans are made of earth and return to earth,16 but they are not generated autonomously from earth. Hesiod had to find a different explanation for
the existence of humans, and somehow knew a myth akin to the creation of
humans account in Genesis that provided it.
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The fable of the races named after metals (gold, silver, bronze, iron) works
on a number of levels. Its most obvious point is that humans grow worse over
time as they become less religious and less dependent on the gods. Violence is
the theme of the generations three through five made by Zeus. The third generation self-​destructs—​much as the generation of “sown men” of the Cadmus
myth (though in that story at least there are survivors). The fifth generation,
the age of iron, in which Hesiod lives, is by far the worst. An obvious message
is that human depravity is caused by impiety and neglect of the gods.
Another reading of the story is that humans are a failed experiment, and
one can only wonder why the gods keep on trying to make it work. We might
think of the gods as scientists in a lab, ever tweaking the last formula to get
it right. But nothing works. Zeus takes over the lab when Kronos is deposed,
and things only get worse from there. Zeus tries planting human seed in the
ground, grafted to ash trees (meilan),17 but that ends up in the bronze generation that self-​destructs (a comparison with the “sown men” myth is unavoidable). The fourth experiment goes well, but is short lived. The fifth brings
fresh disaster. The moral to the story is that humans are not self-​sustaining
(being neither divine nor part of nature), so they must be continually recreated.
The idea that the human race cannot sustain itself and requires repeated
restarts is not unique to the Greeks; it is also biblical. Before Yahweh
decided to destroy the race with a flood on account of the evil in them, he
attempted a couple of refinements. He allowed his sons to make a better race by
mating with the daughters of men. The sons, noting that the daughters of men
were fair, were not reluctant to do the Lord’s bidding. The daughters of men
bore children to them, who became mighty, “men of renown” (Gen. 6:1–​4).
This should have been viewed as a successful experiment, much as the heroes
of the fourth generation in the Hesiodic myth were successful. Yahweh, however, did not see it that way, but saw only persistent evil. He next decided
to limit human life to 120 years. This short-​lived experiment did not work,
either, so a more drastic solution was needed. At that point Yahweh conceived
his plan for the cataclysm that would wipe out the human race. However,
it is uncharacteristic for a god to abandon his handiwork altogether, so he
included in his scheme a plan to save the virtuous Noah and his family. But
after the flood, corruption followed almost immediately. Noah himself was a
bit of a letdown, succumbing to drunkenness and engaging in some kind of
inappropriate act with his son Ham (Gen. 9:21–​22). In a later story God wiped
out the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah with fire, in the end saving only Lot
and his daughters. The daughters resourcefully restarted the race by committing incest with their father.
There is, however, a third way of reading the Hesiodic fable. True, humans
cannot evolve, because they are not a sustainable species. However, not all
knowledge vanishes with the disappearance of each generation. With his mention of bronze armor and implements, Hesiod has introduced the concept of
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23
homo faber (“man the craftsman”). Humans have emerged from their dependence on the gods and have undertaken to do things for themselves. In the
course of this development, they make weapons that increase human efficiency in hunting and warfare. This, in turn, encourages greater violence.
Men become morally worse, but at the same time, smarter and more resourceful. By acknowledging that men of the bronze age did not know “black iron,”
Hesiod demonstrates his awareness of advances in technology brought about
by a fundamental change in the material used for manufacturing things. He
was probably the first writer to use the terms “bronze age” and “iron age” in
the sense they are used by archaeologists and anthropologists today. In sum,
the grim picture of a steady decline in morals that appears to be the main
point of the fable of the metals is offset by the liberation of humans from
their dependence on the gods, advances in the use of reason, and technological progress.
The above account of mankind’s liberation from dependence on the gods
is retold in another myth: the tale of Prometheus and the meeting of gods
and men at Mecone (Theog., lines 534ff.). Mortals and gods had gathered for a
banquet to settle a dispute, a clear indication of a time when humans and deities could converse directly with each other. The cunning Titan Prometheus
divided the portions of the barbecued ox so that humans received the choicest
pieces, while the gods were given the bones covered in fat to disguise them.
The result was predictable. Zeus was furious and refused to share his fire
with mortals so that they could cook and do other things for themselves.
Prometheus, not to be thwarted, stole fire from Zeus, concealing it in a fennel stock, and gave it to the mortal men. Zeus avenged himself on humans
by creating Pandora. But there was another important result glossed over
in silence. Mortals lost their direct contact with gods and had to reach them
through prayer and sacrifice. The age of innocence (and helplessness) came
to an end with the acquisition of the arts that can be practiced by using fire.
Religion itself, invented to compensate for loss of contact to the gods, needed
fire for burning the bones of animals—​a reminder of the treachery committed
at Mecone (Theog., lines 556–​7).
We have seen that “creationism” was introduced to solve a specific problem that the overall model was unable to solve. Evolution cannot be invoked
to explain humans, because humans are incapable of evolving. They cannot
evolve, because they are self-​destructive. The gods, on the other hand, have
reached the end of the evolutionary process. Zeus thwarted a plot to succeed
him by swallowing his wife Metis (Counsel) who was pregnant with a potential usurper, and in the would-​be successor’s stead, Zeus produced Athena
from his head. The succession of usurpations that began with Kronos’s castration of his father Ouranos and Zeus’s imprisoning Kronos in Tartarus has
come to an end. The attempted revolt of the Titan generation in the person of
Prometheus was also swiftly and harshly dealt with. A thoroughly chastened
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Kronos, released on bail from Tartarus, could be trusted to rule benignly over
the Isles of the Blest. Zeus can now reign unopposed forever. The evolution of
the gods has reached its end.
Whereas the vast bulk of the Torah is devoted to codifying legal and ethical matters (in comparison to the number of words given over to history or
cosmology), there is much less in the way of a systematic treatment of these
central issues in the early Greek material. The making and recording of law
codes occurred relatively late in the history of the Greeks. The only text offering
ample discussion of ethical issues is Hesiod’s Works and Days (lines 293–​382
and 695–​763). These passages on good conduct are not set out as laws with
attached penalties, but rather as a series of admonitions with an eye to consequences. Originally delivered as stern advice to Hesiod’s lazy brother, Perses, the
moral portions of the poem may remind some of Benjamin Franklin’s proverbs
and advice, such as “Early to bed and early to rise make a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise,” or the clever Italian saying, “Bacco, tobacco, e venere riducono l’uomo
in cenere” (“Booze, tobacco, and sex turn fellows into wrecks”). Hesiod loathed
idleness above all other vices. But he also railed against base gain and stinginess (those who love to take but never give). Fear of Zeus should prevent anyone
from violently acquiring another’s property, lying with his own brother’s wife,
or abusing his aged parents. Hesiod also recommends regular sacrifice and propitiation of “the deathless gods.” The poet offers clearly worded advice on the
subject of women: “Nothing is better than a good wife, and again, nothing worse
than a bad one.” He also advises men to stay away from “flaunting women”—​
they are just “after your barn.”
By the end of the eighth century b.c.e., the Greek-​speaking world possessed a somewhat loosely knit system of teachings about the world and the
gods and, perhaps, the beginnings of a code of conduct. The world was ruled by
the great god Zeus, to whom all the other gods as well as men were subject; his
will reigned supreme. However, this great God did not create the world. The
careful reader of Hesiod will note that Zeus was the child of the Titans Kronos
and Rhea, and so belonged to the third generation of gods. He is immortal, but
not eternal, as he had a defined beginning. Moreover, unlike Yahweh, who was
there “in the beginning” when he created heaven and earth, none of the gods
of the Greek pantheon had anything to do with the creation of the universe. It
was already fully formed when they were born.
An outstanding difference between Zeus and Yahweh is that Zeus, who
is committed to upholding law and justice (dikē), is not himself the author of
the law, or at least not directly. Rather, this function belonged to the older goddess Themis (“law,” “custom”), the child of Gaia and Ouranos, and thus Zeus’s
aunt. Zeus took this same aunt to be his second wife, and she produced Good
Order, Justice, and Peace.
A similar set of ambiguities affects the moral world and the role of the
gods in rewarding or punishing wrongdoing. In the absence of a defined legal
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the par adigm of the poets
25
or ethical code in the works of Homer and Hesiod, most offences against
the gods fall into the category of hubris, that is, a personal insult against a
particular divinity. Accordingly, Prometheus is punished for cheating Zeus
out of the best portions of sacrificial meat and for stealing fire (Zeus’s personal property). Odysseus is hounded by Poseidon because of the blinding
of Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son; furthermore, the hero’s crew had stolen and
eaten the cattle belonging to Helios (the sun), Poseidon’s close friend. Apollo
sends a plague upon the camps of the Greek forces assembled before Troy,
because King Agamemnon, the leader of the expedition, had dishonored the
god by refusing to surrender a concubine, who happened to be the daughter
of Apollo’s priest. It is true that Hesiod speaks of fearing Zeus, who will be
angry with those who commit adultery or wrongfully seize others’ property,
but Zeus himself is not credited with handing down a code of ethics or law.
The notion of an afterlife in which good people are rewarded and the
wicked punished was not yet developed, although one gets glimpses of it. In
the Odyssey the miscreants Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus are sentenced to
everlasting punishments in Hades for their offenses against Zeus (Od. 11,
604–​29). However, everyday robbers of widows and orphans, or common
murderers, are not singled out for punishment in the afterlife. Similarly,
in the Theogony the Titans are consigned to Tartarus forever because they
warred against Zeus; Tantalus and others are punished in Hades for their personal affronts on Zeus. Written evidence for a belief in a judgment followed
by reward and punishment emerges in the fifth century, when we find it in
Pindar’s “Second Olympian Ode,” although it is not impossible that the belief
was imported into Greece much earlier.
A defining characteristic of Greek and, later, Roman religion was that
it did not require any particular beliefs about the gods, or set out a code of
ethics.18 Religion could be either a social or an individual matter. It had to do
with worshipping the various “national” gods either in a civic ceremony—​
often taking the form of public sacrifice—​or privately in one’s home. Whatever
the case, one sacrificed or paid honor to the gods in order to receive favors from
them, or to avert disaster. A religious act was basically viewed as a contract:
worshippers sacrifice and the god pays up, or else worshippers repay the god
who has done them a favor or saved them from some calamity. The individual
worshipper was under no obligation to accept any tenets of belief about the
gods they cultivated, or even to honor them through good behavior.
This is not to say that a social code of behavior did not exist, or that people felt free to do exactly as they chose. The Homeric works set forth a social
code based on status. The gods were at the top of the hierarchy and were to
be honored at all times (certainly never insulted or challenged). The kings
came next, followed by the nobles. Below these were ordinary people—​
tradesmen and merchants, for instance, followed by tenant farmers and
slaves. Wives were subject to their husbands in all matters, and children
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subject to their fathers. Virtues and vices were represented as behaviors
dictated by one’s station. Hubris, or arrogance toward one’s superiors, was
the supreme crime, and was swiftly avenged. A salient example occurs in
Il. 2, 212ff, when a foot soldier named Thersites (who is described as ugly)
speaks up in the assembly against King Agamemnon, and is roundly beaten
by Odysseus for his insolence. The “code” also set great store on hospitality. Zeus himself guaranteed the safety of travelers, and enforced the rules
regarding their proper treatment. Zeus was also known as the “protector of
oaths.”
Such were the interlocking teachings inherited by the panhellenic world
at the turn of the seventh century b.c.e. These systems were promulgated by
a group of highly authoritative texts. The texts themselves were composed by
poets using the language of myth. The language of myth is the language of
imagination and the improbable. It tells of the things that cannot happen in
the ordinary world, and of beings whose very existence is questionable. Yet
these texts and the myths they contained were buttressed by great authority.
We shall now look at the factors that conferred that authority on them.
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2
What Makes a Work Authoritative?
The four Greek poems discussed in ­chapter 1 were widely regarded as didactic works. They were meant for the instruction of everyone. This should be
obvious in the case of Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem about the origins of gods,
the world, and the things in it. His other poem, Works and Days, is a practical
manual on agriculture and also a primer of good conduct: it teaches a mixture
of moral principle and the kinds of shrewd behavior needed to be successful
in an unforgiving world. But it also contains a more detailed version of the
creation of woman than the one given in the Theogony and follows it with
the fable of Pandora’s Box. It contains as well the very important “allegory of
the metals,” which employs the metals gold, silver, bronze, and iron to symbolize stages of human devolution, or evolution—​depending on one’s point
of view. The fable might be represented as a kind of graph, where lines going
in different directions, one representing human morality heading downward,
the other representing technological progress moving upward intersect, let us
say, at the non-​metallic heroic age.
Homer’s two poems are less obviously didactic. Both are narratives that
have been famous through the ages for their entertainment value. But they,
too, have a great deal to teach about right conduct, and the examples they afford
make up the moral code as it was known. The Iliad and the Odyssey together
provide the descriptions of the physical and moral character of the gods that
were familiar to all Greeks. As importantly, the Iliad stands as the prime textbook of Greek history. The record shows that Greeks took Homer to be their
teacher—​whether for good or for ill. The regard for Homer as the teacher of
the Greeks begins in the sixth century b.c.e. A fragment of Xenophanes of
Colophon records, “… since from the beginning all have learned according
to Homer.”1
A factor that added considerable weight to the reputation of Homer was its
transference to written form. It can be argued that literacy in itself is not essential to provide authority for a work. Nonliterate societies preserved their important works for centuries, and these works served as the lawgivers and models
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of conduct to their respective people. But this model can work only on a small
scale, where there is a cohesive people circumscribed by a small geographical
area. However, between the eighth and the sixth century b.c.e. Greek-​speaking
peoples had settled in areas as far apart as the Black Sea (present-​day Ukraine)
and southern France (Marseilles), with many of the most important settlements located in Sicily and Italy. Until Alexander there was no great king or
ruler to unite them into a single “state” or empire, yet these far-​flung peoples
participated in a common civilization. They not only spoke a common language (allowing for dialects) but also worshipped the same gods. The remains
of buildings and sites still extant and others being excavated reveal that they
built similar buildings and organized their cities in a similar way wherever
they went.
Most importantly, the Greeks took their books with them when they
migrated to new homes. The Greek alphabet was surely in existence in the
first half of the eighth century. It is now believed by some to be a century
older.2 This alphabet was not derived from the syllabary script of Mycenean
times,3 but was the kind of alphabet with which we are familiar, that is, in
which one letter (theoretically) represents one sound. It was adapted from
the Phoenician alphabet and modified so that vowels also had their own distinct symbols. An alphabet has a clear advantage over syllabaries (in which
each syllable has its own symbol) and logographs (in which things and ideas
are represented by pictures and symbols, and there is no relation between
symbol and sound). Logographic systems often involve hundreds of symbols
that must be committed to memory, thereby limiting the number of users to
a relatively small few. Syllabaries were more efficient, but even they involved
a relatively large number of symbols. By contrast, an alphabet of twenty-​t wo
to twenty-​six symbols can be much more easily memorized and applied.
Ease of learning “democratizes” the reading process by making it accessible
to a much larger number of people than, in particular, a logographic system
would permit. In countries such as Egypt and China that used or still use a
logographic system, knowledge of writing was confined to experts (scribes,
Mandarins), who exercised a monopoly on literacy and were usually under
ecclesiastical or state control. 4
Despite a good deal of uncertainty about the use of papyrus rolls in the
seventh and most of the sixth centuries, these objects are depicted on Greek
vases around 500 b.c.e., and it is reasonable to assume that they were in use
before then. In any case, the Greeks also knew the use of writing on leather
(parchment) and wood as well as on stone and ceramic.5 Athens had a written
law code in the 620s, and the use of writing by mercenaries is documented
in the year 593–​592 b.c.e.6 Evidence for early Greek literacy is also distributed widely; it is found in Rhodes, Thera, Crete, Naxos, Athens, Aegina, and
Corinth, and as far away as Cumae on the west coast of Italy.7 Literacy was thus
a unifying factor in the widespread world of the Greeks. It not only stabilized
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what makes a work authoritative?
29
communication across a large geographical area, but it also made possible the
sharing of ideas and the creation of a common literary culture.8
As noted in the Introduction, a fixed written text of Homer’s works was
commissioned around the middle of the sixth century b.c.e. We learn from
the Roman writer Cicero (De oratore 3.137) that the tyrant Pisistratus of Athens
“arranged the books of Homer as we now have them, when they were previously confused.” Cicero’s comment implies that written copies of Homer’s
poems were already in circulation, and a further claim that Pisistratus inserted
new lines implies tampering with a written version or versions. Whatever happened exactly, it is clear that the works of Homer had become so authoritative
that a ruler felt it important to insure them against further corruption. In
other words, there must be one version of Homer that all the rhapsodes (reciters) follow and readers use. It was doubtless the Pisistratan text that was performed every four years at the Panathenaia. However, a late tradition records
that the recitation of Homer at that festival was instituted even earlier by Solon
(ca. 600), the famous Athenian lawgiver who required the rhapsodes to pick
up the recitation wherever the last person left off.9 Whatever the case, and
whatever the political reasons for associating the reciting of Homer with a
festival honoring Athens’ guardian goddess, the desire of this “upstart” city
to take ownership of the poems surely points to the authority they already
enjoyed. For it was only Homer who could be recited.
This was not the last time a political figure was to be involved in publishing an authoritative version of an authoritative work. The Greek Egyptian
King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–​247 b.c.e.) is said to have commissioned
a translation into Greek of the Jewish Bible (Old Testament). According to the
legend, it was carried out by seventy-​t wo Jewish scholars (six were chosen from
each of the twelve tribes) working for seventy-​t wo days in isolation. When the
time came to compare their translations, it was found that they agreed with
each other down to the last jot and tittle. The Septuagint—​so called because of
the number of scholars and days—​was regarded as perfect in every respect. It
could no longer be changed in any way.10 More genuinely historical examples
of the same theme can be found in Charlemagne’s request to Alcuin to establish a pure text of the Vulgate Bible,11 and the role played by King James I of
England in commissioning and approving a translation of the entire Bible to
be used by all members of the English Church.12
The great advantage of a text that is literally set in stone is that it anticipates and wards off potential arguments over what an author actually said.
The example par excellence is the stone inscription entitled Res gestae divi
Augusti, which enumerates in the first person the achievements and honors accorded to the Emperor Augustus.13 An authorized version of a work
written on soft material attempts to do the same thing, but of course it
is subject to forgery once it has been copied. (This is a problem that has
plagued both classical and biblical studies down to the advent of printing.)
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But we can imagine that before the edition commissioned by Pisistratus,
there were copies of Homer’s poems made from divergent oral recitations.
Squabbles doubtless arose, once the genie of critical interpretation got out
of the jar, over what Homer had actually said. An authorized version of
Homer’s works had the effect of enabling Homer’s critics to “sing from
the same hymn book.” To be sure, criticism of certain myths in the poems
could have arisen simply from hearing them recited, and the remarks of the
earliest Homer critics are very general.
However, there is evidence that Theagenes of Rhegium read a text of
Homer around 525 b.c.e.14 Scattered fragments tell us about his activity.
One informs us that he was the first to write about Homer’s family (or
race) and the time when he flourished. Another tells us that the newer sort
of grammar, distinguished from the older that dealt with the rudiments,
began with Theagenes, who was concerned with the niceties of style (hellenismos). A third, which we shall deal with more fully in a subsequent chapter, alleges that Theagenes interpreted Homer allegorically.15 One concludes
from this that Theagenes was an early grammarian who practiced the close
reading of texts in order to make judgments about style. He also wrote on
Homer’s life. It seems reasonable to assume that Theagenes was working
from a written text rather than on relying on his memory of recitations by
rhapsodes. Moving from a set written text of Homer to a written analysis
of his works exemplifies perfectly the theory of Walter Ong regarding the
origin of study:
All thought, including that in primary oral cultures, is to some degree
analytic: it breaks materials into various components. But abstractly
sequential, classificatory, explanatory examination of phenomena or
of stated truths is impossible without writing and reading. Human
beings in primary oral cultures, those untouched by writing in any
form, learn a great deal and possess great wisdom, but they do not
“study.”16
Homer’s and Hesiod’s poems are authoritative because they are the oldest works known to the Greeks that were written down—​even if they may have
been composed orally.17 The names of older poets, however, are recorded.
For example, Musaeus and Orpheus and a few others were believed to have
existed before Homer and Hesiod.18 Orpheus, in particular, was famous
because of the legends attached to him. The son of Apollo and a Muse, and
his power of song was so great that it even overcame the Sirens. He is the
chief protagonist in the tragic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. It is said that he
was torn apart by Thracian women, but after his death his head continued
to sing. Fragments of a theogony attributed to Orpheus have been discovered, but these have been shown to be a forgery of the fifth century b.c.e.
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or later. However, as these poets (and the works attributed to them) were
attached to particular cults, they never achieved the universality—​and thus
not the authority—​of Homer and Hesiod, whose study required no religious
initiation.
Homer and Hesiod recited the beginnings. Hesiod sang of the origins
of the gods and the first things, while Homer recorded the earliest history.
Other ancient legends were known—​especially stories about Heracles—​but
no saga was so deeply Greek as the tales of the Trojan War and the homecomings of its heroes. As noted, for the Greeks the events of the Trojan War were
the beginnings of Greek history, and no other extant account provided so
much detail about the names and pedigrees of the great heroes. The expedition against Troy is a foundation legend of the Greek people in the same way
that the Exodus from Egypt was the foundation story of the Israelites. These
analogous accounts record how scattered peoples were brought together
under great leaders and a sense of nationhood was formed. The Achaeans
came together to liberate a kidnapped princess; the Jewish tribes coalesced
to liberate themselves. Of course, the analogy cannot be pushed too far. The
Greeks remained politically and religiously divided, while the Hebrews, at
least according to the biblical account, became a single nation under a single
God. However, it is worth noting that Homer and Hesiod both promote the
idea that Zeus is, in every way, the greatest of gods and men, and thus the
greatest god for all Greeks.
Despite the poets’ attachment to the cult of Zeus and the promotion of
Zeus as a “national god,” it is crucial to note that none of the writings of Homer
and Hesiod received religious sanction—​at least as far as we know. All of their
works dealt with the gods and promoted their worship, but they had no priestly
authority. We have seen that the recitation of Homer’s poems enjoyed a central
role in the festival of the Panathenaia. It is possible that the so-​called Homeric
Hymns, written later, were used at religious festivals, though their metrical
form did not lend itself to choral singing.19 But the foundational books by
Homer and Hesiod, for all that they taught about the gods, were not used as
religious books. Most importantly, their teachings about the gods were not
regarded as articles of faith.20
Were the foundational poems divinely inspired? Inspiration of writers is
a complicated topic, and it is not always easy to translate an ancient claim to
inspiration into modern understanding. Inspiration, or at least the wish to
be inspired, was commonly expressed in ancient Greece by a direct invocation of the poet’s Muse in the opening lines of a poem. Homer’s allusions
to his Muse appear to be conventional; they occur in the form of simple
requests to the Muse to “sing” (Iliad) or “relate” (Odyssey). Thus, they strike
us today as little more than poetic devices. However, Homer was not content
to invoke his Muse only at the beginning of his poems. In the middle of book
2 of the Iliad the poet calls upon his Muse again, this time to give the names
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of the chiefs of the Danaans, the Greek forces assembled at Aulis on their
way to Troy:
Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus.
For you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things,
And we have heard only the rumour of it and know nothing.
Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans?21
Homer complains that if he had ten tongues and mouths, an unbreakable
voice, and a heart of bronze, he could not accurately relate the catalogue of leaders, unless the Muses recounted to him “all those who came beneath Ilion”
(Il. 2, 492). For Homer, at least, this passage shows that the Muses not only
confer the gift of beautiful song but are also guarantors of the truth. They,
after all, live on Olympus, and know everything that is going on. They have
true knowledge, not just opinion (kleos).
Hesiod’s more nuanced description of inspiration seems to be at odds
with Homer’s. The opening of Theogony purports to describe how the Muses
taught beautiful song to the poet as he was tending his sheep below sacred
Helicon (the mountain that is said to be the home of the Muses). Hesiod says
that the Muses breathed into him “a divine voice” so that he could celebrate the
things that will happen and things that have happened before. This appears to
mean that the poet possesses a prophetic power that can access both the future
and the past. Present events are presumably omitted from the list because they
do not need a special gift, but future and past are equally inaccessible to the
common human experience.
The Muses who confer this power are divine; they are daughters of Zeus
himself. But does this mean that poets are nothing more than mouthpieces
for divine utterances? Hesiod makes no claim to recite words that are breathed
into him by the goddesses. Rather, it is a divine voice that is instilled in him;
the poet is to use it “to sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally”
(lines 33–​34). The Muses thus provide the poet with his subject matter and the
talent to do it justice. The words remain the poet’s own. Even so, we are left
with some doubts about the subject matter itself. Hesiod punctuates his claim
to divine inspiration with a question mark by making his Muses say, “We know
how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when
we shall, to utter true things” (lines 26–​27). The ambiguity in these lines was
later exploited by the critics of poetry. In the case of Hesiod, a poet’s claim to be
inspired by a Muse added little to the authority of his work, at least in respect of
its truthfulness. The Muses’ job was to make poems more beautiful.
Is it possible to explain these apparently divergent views of inspiration?
I suggest that the differences are owed to subject matter. Homer is dealing primarily with the lives of men—​indeed, particular men, the Danaans (Greeks)
who fought bravely at Troy. These men deserved to be remembered. People
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alive in his day thought of them as their ancestors; they felt a strong connection. Without the services of a poet strictly guided by Memory, all knowledge
of the heroes’ deeds would be lost forever. Some parts of Homer’s Iliad are
therefore commemorative,22 and proper commemoration demands complete
accuracy. Just as today an obituary writer is not content to pen generalities
about his subject’s life, but inquires into the particulars and does his best to
verify them, so Homer trusted the daughters of Memory to recount the names
of each captain, the places where his fighters came from, and the exact number of ships he brought to the campaign. Because we are led to believe that the
Muses in these cases complied with the poet’s request, none of the information could be subject to doubt.
Hesiod’s Theogony is all about gods—​gods in every form imaginable. As
we noted, humans are an afterthought in this epic. They are unnamed, and
their presence unaccounted for. They are not commemorated. The point here
is that commemoration applies only to mortals; gods cannot be commemorated, because they do not die. Moreover, one cannot have certain knowledge
of divine beings; one must be content with kleos (“rumor,” in this context).
That is why a poet cannot be certain when the Muses are willing “to utter true
things.” He can claim only to have received a beautiful voice.
Several centuries after Hesiod, the Athenian philosopher Plato took a different tack on the topic of inspiration, with devastating results:
Thus the Muse herself makes people possessed, and from these
possessed persons there hangs a chain of others, possessed with the
same enthusiasm. All good epic poets produce all their beautiful
poems not by art but because they are inspired and possessed. So too
with good lyric poets: just as the Corybantic dancers perform when
they are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets compose these
beautiful songs when they are not in their right mind; once involved
in harmony and rhythm, they are in a state of possession and it is
then … that the lyric poets have the experience they describe to us …
Now this is perfectly true: a poet is a light, winged, holy creature,
and cannot compose until he is out of his mind, and his reason is no
longer in him.23
Hesiod and Plato agreed that Muses are needed for writing beautifully,
but neither believed that they were much help for the truth. Hesiod saw the
poet as potentially susceptible to the Muses’ lies (not knowing whether the
Muses were lying or not), whereas Plato viewed the poet as simply out of his
mind. Plato’s pupil Aristotle contradicted his master’s view on the poet’s state
of mind: “Poetry is the work of a genius rather than that of a madman.”24
However, as we shall see, Aristotle also held a different view from his master’s
about the kind of truth poetry teaches.
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All of this is a far cry from the Jewish and Christian teaching that sees
scripture as a revelation from God. In the case of the Bible, it is God who initiates the revelation. The human search for answers to questions does not play
a role. Revelation is essential to God’s plan for the conduct of his creation. It
involves covenants, laws, and—​in the Christian view—​God’s plan for human
salvation. In the case of direct revelation, God treats the human recorder as
a typist responding to a dictaphone: God’s chosen secretaries have no other
task than to record the exact words of God in their books and transmit them
to the people. In the case of indirect revelation, God or his agent (an angel?)
allows his recorders to exercise their creative talents, but guides their minds
and hands, and guarantees the truthfulness of the results. Because God is all
good, he cannot lie. The inference from this is that all of scripture must be
true. Scripture is also a holy thing because it comes from God. The doctrine
of divine inspiration thus greatly enhances the authority of scripture. It provides firewall protection for God’s word. The wall, though damaged, persists
to this day.
Even without the claim to represent God’s own words, and without priestly
sanction, the writings of Homer and Hesiod exercised great authority. They
formed the basis of education throughout the Hellenic world, and they were
pored over by early philosophers and historians as diligently as the Torah was
by rabbinical students. Indeed, the vast majority of surviving commentaries
and collections of scholia are directed to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Serious
philosophers undertook to write commentaries on them and interpret them
by their own lights. The answers lie in the poems themselves, in their content,
and in their style. Their content speaks for itself. These early poems laid claim
to the secrets of the universe, the nature of the gods, and the beginnings of the
Greeks. Like Genesis, the two poets’ works collectively move from the genesis
of the cosmos to the story of “the people.” And importantly, Homer and Hesiod
were the first to do this. Together they created the paradigm of the poets.
Whereas Hesiod’s continuing authority depended largely on the content of
the Theogony and the interest it held for philosophers of a later age, Homer’s
gained greatly from its style. The grandeur and beauty of Homer’s poetry
caused even skeptical minds and haters of myth to temporarily suspend disbelief and allow themselves to be engulfed by its magic. Homer gave the world
its first taste of the classical hexameter, a metrical line that is at once complex
and majestic. Unlike familiar English rhythms that can turn monotonous in
a long work, the hexameter can accommodate a great deal of variation within
it without losing its metrical form. It is thus an ideal medium for sustaining a
long epic poem. Add to its effect Homer’s frequently “mysterious” vocabulary.
Out of the approximately 7,600 words that are not proper names, over 2,300
are attested only once—​and that “once” is in Homer. Even in Pisistratus’s
day these words would have been felt as rare and archaic—​both learned and
mysterious.
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The effect on the listener then would not have been so different from the
effect of Shakespeare on listeners now. When we go to a play by Shakespeare,
we have to be extra attentive at first to catch what is said, as it takes a few
minutes to adjust the ear. Many of Shakespeare’s words have long passed out
of everyday usage, and we need to be taught their meanings. (We need to
study, in other words.) But the effect of the best speeches Shakespeare gave
his characters can bring us to tears. We are carried away; we know that we
are hearing something deep, something venerable, something important—​
even if we don’t understand every single word. The rhapsodes, like the best
Shakespearean actors, devoted their talents to producing the same effects.
Homer gave the Greeks something new: he gave them the Sublime.
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3
Physis—​Redefining the Gods
The Greek sophists who challenged conventional thinking about the gods and
morality in Athens in the later fifth century b.c.e. would have felt a kinship
with the skeptical minds of the European Enlightenment of our era who questioned the absolutist claims of religion. In both cases, the rise of skepticism
and freethinking was based on major changes in thinking about the nature
of the world and its origins. The protagonists of the Enlightenment were able
to build upon the scientific advances of Galileo and Kepler. In a similar vein,
the Greek sophists did not just pop up like Athena springing from the head of
Zeus. They drew deeply on the writings of the natural philosophers who had
been active in the century and a half before them. These were the Presocratics.1
For the French rationalists the line of battle was drawn between science
and religion; for Greek intellectuals the line was between science and myth.
The political conditions, however, were very different. For the brave soldiers
of the Enlightenment in France an established Church was an obstacle to
progress, as it could use its power to burn books and its authors with them.
Conditions were not so extreme in preclassical Greece; it was only in the latter
part of the fifth and the fourth century, and then only in Athens, that we find
attempts to suppress free expression. For the pioneers of Greek science the
chief target was the myths of the poets, not the cults of the gods. As we shall
see, the first phase of the campaign concentrated on the myths themselves.
At a later phase, starting with Plato, it turned against poetry, the medium
of myth.
One of the major aims of the Presocratic philosophers was to demythologize religion. A similar effort was made in the twentieth century by Christian
theologians who believed that Christianity would be more attractive to rational
people without the requirement to believe in implausible stories such as the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus.2 (Bodies, once dead, cannot be resuscitated, and humans do not fly.) It is theoretically possible for religion, understood as the worship of supernatural beings, to exist without the trappings of
myth. But there is a nexus between myth and religion that is very difficult to
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break.3 This is because it is the wondrous deeds and achievements of supernatural beings attested in song that inspire belief in them and promote their
cults. Liturgies and prayers connect the praise of the gods, or petitions to
them, with their power to perform miracles or bring a benefit to the devotee.
That power is demonstrated by the wonders they achieved in the past that are
“remembered” in prayers and hymns like the so-​called Homeric Hymns. 4
After complaints about the immorality of the Homeric gods, the chief
criticisms involved the supernatural actions that were ascribed to them. These
included shape shifting, instantaneous relocation, changing humans into
animals or trees, placing them in the sky as constellations, and every other
kind of action that compromised the gods’ own nature or the nature of other
beings. In other words, rational men could not believe in gods that performed
actions contrary to nature. God cannot do what is impossible. In this context
it is instructive to read the words of a contemporary Christian theologian cited
by Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion:
What the theist claims about God is that he does have power to create,
conserve, or annihilate anything, big or small. And he can also make
objects move or do anything else … He can make the planets move
in the way that Kepler discovered that they move, or make gunpowder
explode when we set a match to it; or he can make planets move in
quite different ways, and chemical substances explode or not explode
under quite different conditions from those which now govern their
behaviour. God is not limited by the laws of nature; he makes them
and he can suspend them—​if he chooses.5
For believing Christians, the above statement enjoyed long sanction.
Augustine made very similar statements in The City of God—​most alarmingly
in his attempt to prove that physical bodies can “live” forever in hellfire.6 The
notion that divine miracles contravene the laws of nature worried a rationalist Irishman in the seventh century c.e., who went to great lengths to show
that God did not violate nature, but exploited its properties to work his miracles. More to our purpose, it worried Galen (129?–​199 c.e.), physician to the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the most famous medical writer of antiquity.
Galen was deeply interested in religion and philosophy. By the end of the first
century c.e. the Jewish and Christian scriptures were beginning to attract the
attention of Greek and Roman thinkers.7 Here is what Galen had to say on
Jewish versus Greek ideas on God/​god:
It is precisely this point in which our own opinion and that of Plato
and the other Greeks who follow the right method in natural science
differs from the position taken up by Moses. For the latter it seems
enough to say that God simply willed the arrangement of matter and
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it was presently arranged in due order; for he believes everything
to be possible with God, even should he wish to make a bull or a
horse out of ashes. We, however, do not hold this; we say that certain
things are impossible by nature and that God does not even attempt
such things at all but that he chooses the best out of the possibility
of becoming.8
The phrase “impossible by nature” says it all. From the beginning the idea
of nature was deeply ingrained in the Greek mind. A large proportion of the
philosophical works written in the sixth and fifth century b.c.e. were entitled
On Nature. The study of nature involved both the study of natural phenomena
and speculations as to the origin and nature of the cosmos—​what we today
call “theoretical physics.”9
The early Greeks did not yet speak of the “laws of nature,” because the
usual word for law (nomos) was bound up with the notion of a convention, something that could arbitrarily change. Indeed, nomos (law, custom) was thought
of as being in antithesis to physis (nature) or anankē (necessity). At the same
time, the Greeks conceived of nature as behaving according to unchangeable
laws—​even though they would not have used the word “law” with its connotation of arbitrariness. Thus, for example, when a natural being dies, it cannot
come back to life—​or be brought back to life by some agent. And so, as Galen
makes clear, God cannot make a bull or a horse out of ashes. Nor—​to return
to Dawkins’s theologian—​can God cause the planets to behave in any way
other than they habitually do. The gods may have a sphere of operation, but it
is within the confines of nature, which should be defined as “the way things
are,” or as we say today, “it’s hard wired.”
Centuries before Galen, an anonymous Greek physician, who was probably
a contemporary of the earliest atomists, wrote a treatise entitled On the Sacred
Disease. The “sacred disease” was the common Greek phrase for epilepsy, so-​
called either because it was inflicted by the gods, or because the gods had a
special care for epileptics. Because of its divine associations it was thought that
it could not be cured by normal medical procedures, but only through incantations or purifications. The author of On the Sacred Disease attacked this notion
in the following way:
I do not believed that the sacred disease is any more divine or sacred
than any other disease, but on the contrary, just as other diseases have
a nature from which they arise so this one has a nature (physis) and a
definite cause (prophasis).10
The author proceeded to attack the authors of these superstitious ideas,
labeling them “magicians” (magoi) and “charlatans” (alazones). At the end of
his treatise he explains the general cause of diseases:
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Each disease has its own nature [physis] and power [dunamis] and there
is nothing in any disease which is unintelligible or insusceptible to
treatment. The majority of maladies are cured by the same things as
caused them.11
The emphasis on natural causes and the dislike of supernatural explanations for medical conditions found here is manifested in other areas investigated by the thinkers of the sixth and fifth centuries b.c.e. The greater part of
them had well-​developed interests in mathematics and natural science. The
first wave hailed from Ionia, the name for a group of Greek-​speaking cities
on or near the western coast of Turkey. Thales of Miletus (ca. 600 b.c.e.), the
earliest of the Ionians, was said to be a mathematician, astronomer, and engineer. He is credited with predicting an eclipse and diverting the bed of a river.
His successor Anaximander was a geometer and cartographer. Pythagoras is
well known for his theorem of the right triangle, still taught today in schools.
Xenophanes’ study of fossils taught him that the sea had once been where land
is now. All of these early thinkers employed writing, and fragments of their
books are quoted by later philosophers such as Aristotle; historians of thought
including Diogenes Laertius, who covered the lives of the philosophers from
Thales to Epicurus; and even the Fathers of the early Christian Church, who
often cited them in order to refute their teachings.
None of the sixth-​century cosmologists tried to rid the universe of gods,
or replace God with a particle. The main reason for this is that no thinker
or writer of the sixth or fifth century believed that a god or gods created the
world. Their interest, rather, lay in separating what belonged to nature from
the activities and powers of the divine. This was no easy task, and it often
resulted in transferring divine powers to nature. To reach that understanding,
it was first necessary to abolish or reinterpret the gods of the poets, then to
demythologize the language of cosmology and replace it with “natural” language. This was a slow and difficult process. Doing away with the poets’ gods
as real gods was widely agreed upon, but what does one do about gods in general or the existence of the divine? Only a very few were prepared to do without
god altogether.
For the most part, the earliest Greek intellectuals were engaged in regularizing or rationalizing the activities of the gods within a preexistent cosmos. Theology could not be separated entirely from cosmology. It was only
with the atomists in the latter part of the fifth century that a cosmos was
posited in which divine activity was thought superfluous to requirements.
The process was unsteady, moving in zigzag fashion, but one can see at
least a hint of movement from the idea that gods were in everything to the
idea that a godlike force was involved in some kind of ordering process, and
finally, to the notion that the gods really had nothing to do with the cosmic
workings at all.
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The cosmologists who spanned the long Presocratic period (about 200 years)
disagreed with one another about many things, but they seem to have settled
on four points: (1) The stuff that constitutes the world, in some form or other,
always was and always will be. (2) Everything that is is made of some material,
i.e., has weight and measure. (3) And—​this is the point to be stressed—​matter
or the prime substance was not created by any god. Some sort of Mind could give
a kick-​start to the swirl, but it could not make the stuff that is in it. Heraclitus put
it most succinctly: “This world order (the cosmos) did none of gods or men make,
but it always was and is and shall be.”12 (4) As a corollary of point 3, the gods are
secondary phenomena; they are generated, but do not create.
The big disagreements were over the question what the basic stuff is from
which everything else is derived, and the related question, if that stuff is one
or many, or simply everything all at once. The debate revolved around the term
archē, the principle that explains both the stuff out of which things are created
and simultaneously the cause of their creation. Even Plato, who, in the form of
a fable,13 posited a creator god, believed that the elements (earth, air, fire, and
water) were always there for the demiurge to work with.
We can see the beginnings of the discussion of the archē in Thales of
Miletus (born in the seventh century b.c.e.), who maintained that water was
the principle (archē) of all things.14 He also stated that “all things were full of
gods”15—​and that is why a magnet works! It would seem that for Thales, divine
operation was still needed to explain mysterious natural events. But Thales’
“gods” are not external to the magnet; they belong to it. “They” are its nature;
they make it work. Aristotle interpreted Thales’ remarks to mean that a magnet is ensouled because it has “kinetic” power,16 that is, it can move something
else. But I think that the point for Thales is that natural objects can have inexplicable properties that cause things, in every case, to happen in a particular
way. We say that a plant has a certain property that always has the same effect
on a human who ingests it, for example, hemlock in a potion invariably causes
death. If one were to refer to the fatal property as the hemlock’s nature, we are
no further ahead in understanding how it works than if we say that the property is divine. The difference between Thales’ thesis and primitive animism is
that in the first instance, things always work in a predictable way because of
their “divine” properties; in the second, one must resort to incantation or some
form of manipulation to make them work.
Greek empiricism could observe only that things regularly work in certain
ways; it was unable to advance to why they work as they do. Modern biochemistry and molecular biology can now solve questions surrounding a plant’s
properties, just as the science of magnetic fields explains the why or how of
magnets. But god and nature remained commingled as far as Aristotle (and
beyond). Both Plato and Aristotle thought of the cosmos as ensouled, and
referred to it as “divine.”17 The great advance made by the early Greek philosophers, as we shall see, was not the abolition of the divine element, but the
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removal of the anthropomorphic gods. However, the gods had to be accommodated, and so, from Thales onward, they were (1) embedded in nature;
(2) given a role in organizing the cosmos without creating it; (3) in the case of
the atomists, declared redundant.
Thales’ successor Anaximander had nothing to say about the gods per se,
but held some very interesting ideas about astronomy (the sun is twenty-​eight
times the size of the earth) and about the origin of animals and humans.
He hypothesized that the first living things came from moisture enclosed
in bark,18 while humans originated from a nonhuman species that differed
from that of other animals because human infants take so long to be self-​
sufficient.19 He also taught that all things ultimately came from an infinite
(material) substance called the apeiron (“unbounded”).20 But he too called the
apeiron “divine,” for that was the descriptor needed for that which is eternal
and the source of everything else.
Gods are explicitly mentioned by Anaximenes, the successor to the “chair”
of Thales after Anaximander. Anaximenes taught that air (the archē, or first
principle of things) did not come from the gods, but the gods came from air.
Yet he would also refer to air as a god.21 The philosophers who posited a single
element as the source of all things were confronted with the problem of how
this element changed into, or produced, other things that were different from
it. If you say, as Anaximenes did, that “all things come into being from air and
into it they are again dissolved,”22 you must explain how this can occur of itself
(that is, naturally), or attribute some type of creative force to the element—​in
which case you are flirting again with the idea of god.
Since the archē (air in this case, water and fire in others) is uncreated,
and everything comes from it, then it must possess special generative powers
that could be equated with the divine.23 The principle enjoys the advantage
of self-​containment. One might here invoke “Ockham’s razor”: it is better to
explain a phenomenon by a single hypothesis than by two or more. One does
not need a god or gods that are separate from nature to explain coming into
being or change. The appeal to the archē would also seem to exclude any kind
of exterior cause of change or motion. The concept of the archē in its varieties
was critically reviewed by Aristotle in the first book of his Metaphysics (983b –​
984a), and found wanting (984a).24 Indeed, he argued that it satisfied only the
first (the material) of the four necessary causes of things: material, formal,
efficient, final (Phys. 194b). These can be briefly explained as (1) the stuff out
of which a substance is made; (2) the shape or form of a substance (that which
makes it recognizable as what it is); (3) the action or series of actions that are
the immediate cause of a substance’s existence; (4) the end for which a specific substance is made.25 The early thinkers, especially the Ionians, probably
believed that all of these were included in the gift of the archē. They disagreed
with one another on whether its operations involved the divine or were completely natural.
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43
Philosophers use the term “monist” (from monos, “one,” “only”) to refer
to the tradition of positing a single element (archē) as the explanation of
everything else. The last of the monists was also from Ionia, though not from
Miletus. Heraclitus was born in Ephesus, ca. 540 b.c.e. Heraclitus’s reputed
arrogance and his riddling pronouncements made him a target for abusive
remarks over the centuries. Even the manner of his death was derided:
Having fallen … into a dropsy he came down to town and asked the
doctors in a riddle if they could make a drought out of rainy weather.
When they did not understand he buried himself in a cow-​stall,
expecting that the dropsy would be evaporated off by the heat of the
manure; but even so he failed to effect anything, and ended his life at
the age of sixty.26
For Heraclitus, fire was the single uncreated principle that is the explanation of everything else: “All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for
all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods.”27 Like his predecessors,
Heraclitus believed that the cosmos was a unity, and that opposition between
things was only apparent (“The way up is the way down”). Heraclitus also
introduced the concept of logos (“reason”) and gnōmē (“thought,” “judgment”)
into his universal view. These principles were not differentiated from the archē,
but were inherent within it. Heraclitus was innovative in attributing a mental
function to his archē, everlasting fire, but he remained loyal to his Ionian predecessors by excluding external factors of causality. One did not require a transcendent god. External gods, then, were superfluous to requirements. They
had no involvement in creating the cosmos, or in keeping it running. Cosmic
fire was itself divine and rational because it contained logos. This notion may
well account for the puzzling “Thunderbolt steers all things.”28 Thunderbolt
is self-​sufficient cosmic fire; there is no need to introduce the god who throws
it. Heraclitus introduced metonymic language when he said, “One thing, the
only truly wise [hen to sophon], does not and does consent to be called by the
name of Zeus.”29
How and why did the marginalization—​or redefinition—​of the gods
begin? To answer this question, it helps if we think of the poems of Homer
and Hesiod not as mere works of fiction (as we now tend to read them), but
(as noted in the previous chapters) as authoritative sources on cosmology, theology, and history that were available in written form. Heraclitus gives us a
clue as to how he and other thinkers of his day might have read them. He
writes, “Learning of many things does not teach intelligence; if so, it would
have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.”30
To understand the import of this quotation we must say something about
the three individuals mentioned after Hesiod. Pythagoras was a mathematician and moral philosopher; Xenophanes of Colophon wrote on natural science
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and theology; Hecataeus (ca. 500 b.c.e.) was an early cartographer, geographical writer, and collector of legends. All three therefore had good credentials
in mathematics or science—​subjects we now call “the hard sciences.” Why
would Heraclitus lump these respectable men together with a “mythological”
poet? I suspect that the answer is that he thought of Hesiod as one of his predecessors in cosmological theory. In this he was not alone; later Aristotle was
to think of Hesiod in the same way, describing him as though he had been a
philosopher like Thales, with his own school and successors.31
A fragment of Heraclitus’s writings survives that tells us one of the reasons for his scathing remarks regarding Hesiod:
For very many people Hesiod is <their> teacher. They are certain he
knew a great number of things—​he who continually failed to recognize
<even> day and night <for what they are> ! For they are one.32
The criticism made here is based on Heraclitus’s theory of the unity of
apparent opposites (illustrated by “The road up is the road down” and similar statements). We can only guess his other reasons for dismissing Hesiod.
I suspect Heraclitus also wanted to pick a bone with the poet over the principle of causation. Whereas the older writer posited erōs (attraction) as the
principle of causation, Heraclitus opted for its opposite, eris (strife or repulsion): “all things happen by strife and necessity.”33 (However, Heraclitus very
likely believed that strife was already inherent in everliving fire, and not a
separate agent.)
Had Heraclitus’s dismissal of Hesiod survived as the only negative comment on either of the two authoritative poets, we would never have had any
inkling of an important shift in thought and expression between the eighth
century and the sixth. Fortunately, we have a group of fragments from a book
written by Xenophanes of Colophon, whom we just met as one of Heraclitus’s
targets. Xenophanes, who was apparently older than Heraclitus (who cites him),
was born in Ionia, the same region that had produced Thales, Anaximander,
Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. After some traveling about, Xenophanes moved
to Elea (modern Velia), a Greek colony on the southwest coast of Italy. We have
no exact dates for him, but it seems that his life spanned much of the sixth
century b.c.e. and some of the fifth—​we know from his own words that he was
still alive at age 92.34
Xenophanes gives us a few hints about his character in the surviving fragments of his poems. He makes himself out to be an affable fellow who enjoyed
food, wine, and pleasant conversation:
The mixing bowl stands full of cheer
and another wine, mild and flower fragrant in the jars, is at hand—​
which says it never will give out.35
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45
Xenophanes was a product of his age and his Ionian heritage. Like his
contemporaries and near-​contemporaries (Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus), he
pursued a wide range of interests: the study of fossils, speculative cosmology,
theology, and the theory of knowledge—​all this in addition to writing poetry
of a non-​philosophical character. It is generally agreed that his claim to fame
rests with his innovative theology. This includes both a repudiation of the gods
of the poets and a revolutionary (for Greeks, at least) rethinking of the nature
of god. Whether Xenophanes had read a copy of Homer’s writings, or simply
knew them from gists or by hearing rhapsodes, cannot be proved from the
evidence we have. However, the fragments are worth quoting in full:
1. Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame
and reproach among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving
each other.
2. But mortals consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and
speech and bodies like their own.
3. The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-​nosed and black, the Thracians
that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.
4. But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their
hands and do the works that men can do, horses would draw the forms of
the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.36
It is obvious here that Xenophanes is attacking the anthropomorphic conception of gods that was taught by the poets and probably accepted by most
people. Homer and Hesiod, as the first of the poets, must own up to the blame.
Xenophanes goes beyond these bald statements and develops a theory that
explains human ideas of god that is strikingly modern. We humans project
not only our physical traits, but also our moral characteristics onto our gods.
The philosopher might have added that we do this in order to excuse and justify our worst traits. If a god can steal or commit adultery, why shouldn’t we?
(This conclusion, however, was drawn later.) We also detect the philosopher’s
insight into the sociological fact that different cultures create different gods
for themselves. He reduces the idea to absurdity by imagining animals doing
the same. However, Xenophanes is no cultural or moral relativist. Quite the
contrary. There is a god. There is one who is the greatest. And he bears no
resemblance to humans:
1. One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either
in body or in thought.
2. Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for
him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all
things by the thought of his mind.
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3. All of him sees, all thinks, and all hears.
4. (Zeus) hurls mortals to destruction from their high towered expectations,
but puts forth no force: everything of gods is without toil. Sitting he nevertheless at once accomplishes his thought, somehow, from his holy resting
place.37
These statements are drawn from the body of commonly accepted fragments of Xenophanes. But other ancient witnesses expand the testimony. One
comes from Aristotle, who ascribes to Xenophanes the statement “those who
say that the gods are born are as impious as those who say that they die; for
it follows on both views that there is a time when the gods do not exist.”38
The statement fits Xenophanes’ theology if only because it is consistent with
his anti-​anthropomorphic views of divinity. Homer and nearly all other poets
referred to the gods as athanatoi, “deathless,” but they did not call them aiōnioi,
“eternal.” Moreover, Homer and especially Hesiod record the circumstances of
their births.
Xenophanes does not tell us that his “one greatest god” created the world;
he says only that he “shakes all things by the thought of his mind.” But this
god is not an archē as the Milesians conceived it.39 He is described as a living
being, not as an inanimate element or undefined matter. Because he sits, he
is not entirely free of anthropomorphic features; he apparently has a body. The
break with the Ionian tradition I mentioned above is the introduction of a god
who stands (or in this case, “sits”) apart from nature. His thinking god is to
be contrasted with Heraclitus’s all-​pervasive logos, which is subsumed in the
archē that is everliving fire, or with Anaximenes’ air, which is divine and even
produces gods from itself.
In one respect, however, Xenophanes has not progressed beyond Homer
and Hesiod. He still speaks of a plurality of gods, among whom one is by
far the most powerful. But, of course, it is possible that his use of the plural
is simply a concession to popular belief, and the word “gods” is intended
as a substitute for a unified divinity. 40 However, elsewhere Xenophanes
speaks of “gods.” Monotheism versus polytheism was not a dilemma for
the early Greeks. Even in Homer and Hesiod, where polytheism is the normal state, one god (Zeus) is “greatest of gods and men.” In every other way
Xenophanes’ thoughts are revolutionary. His influence in the area of theology was certainly profound, 41 even if his cosmological musings had little
impact. We can credit Xenophanes with three achievements: (1) detaching
a belief in the gods from the popular myths about them; (2) substituting
mythological language with the language of natural philosophy; (3) creating a new concept of god altogether—​one freed from anthropomorphic misconceptions and thus from moral imperfection.
Let us add a word here regarding Xenophanes’ second contribution: replacing mythological language with the language of natural philosophy.
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Xenophanes seems to have been the earliest Greek thinker to apply the term
“fiction” to myths. The Greek word for fiction is plasma (plural plasmata). At
the end of the poem about a banquet (cited above), he writes in praise of the
man who after taking drink recites noble and virtuous deeds:
Praise the man who when he has taken drink brings noble deeds to light,
as memory and a striving for virtue bring to him.
He deals neither with the battles of Titans nor Giants
nor Centaurs, fictions [plasmata] of old,
nor furious conflicts—​for there is no use in these.
But it is good always to hold the gods in high regard. 42
Here we have what might be the earliest example of a Western thinker making
a clear distinction between deeds that are assumed to be true and the fictions
of mythology. Another of the fragments makes the distinction between the
natural properties of a thing, in this case, a rainbow, and the personification
attached to it in received mythology:
And she whom they call Iris, this too is by nature a cloud,
purple, red and greenish yellow to behold. 43
Xenophanes is telling his readers that the name Iris is just a figure of speech
(that is, personification) used to denote a natural phenomenon. The statement
can also be pushed further to mean that when you look at a rainbow, you are
just seeing a cloud composed of many colors, not the appearance of a goddess. Xenophanes might as well have said the same of Helios, the sun god, for
he advanced the theory that the sun is made of ignited clouds. 44 One might
speculate that by removing god from natural objects (gods taken out of the
magnet, Iris taken out of the rainbow), Xenophanes was able to contemplate a
nature that was truly “natural.” We do not know how he reconciled all this with
his notion of “one god who shakes all things.”
We have seen that mind, or some form of mental agent, is the common
element that links Heraclitus to Xenophanes, whom the former at least had
read, if only to disagree with. Heraclitus calls this mental process logos, while
his predecessor had called it nous. Anaxagoras followed in chronological order.
He thought of mind as one of two first principles, the other being “all things
mixed together” (the One). Anaxagoras’s term for mind is also nous. Yet his
use of this word differs markedly from that of Xenophanes. For the latter,
nous was a faculty possessed by god. It was the organ that god used to “shake
all things.” In ordinary language we would call it “the mind of God.” The
word “god” does not occur at all in Anaxagoras’s vocabulary. Nous (“mind”)
exists in the abstract; it is not owned by any being. And unlike Heraclitus’s
logos, Anaxagoras’s nous is not common to everything (that is, inside it),
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but exists outside everything—​
it is “infinite,” “unmixed,” and “all alone
by itself.”45 Yet it functions analogously to Heraclitus’s “thunderbolt” (“the
aether” = fire = logos?), which steers, and to Xenophanes’ “one god” who rules
by shaking. Nous is the principle that starts things whirling.
We know little about the man Anaxagoras. He provides no helpful
glimpses into his personality as Xenophanes did, nor does the biographical
information from later sources reveal any distinguishing characteristics. Like
his forerunners in cosmology, he hailed from Ionia, specifically from the town
of Clazomenae, which lies on the west coast of Turkey north of Ephesus. By all
accounts, he was the first of the Presocratic philosophers to settle and teach in
Athens. He was credited with predicting the fall of a stone out of the sky that
landed by a river and was later erected as an object of worship. Doubtless he
was describing a meteorite because a comet had been observed not long before
the stone’s fall. He was the first Greek to be brought up on a charge of impiety
in Athens, but escaped the death penalty (the prescribed punishment for this
crime), possibly because he was on friendly terms with the tyrant Pericles, or,
as other sources say, because the jury took pity on him. He moved afterward to
Lampsacus, where he was held in high honor. Legend has it that his death day
was made a civic holiday there.
More is known about Anaxagoras’s teachings that show his penchant for
naturalist explanations of phenomena:
In the beginning the stars were carried around as though in a dome,
so that the celestial pole which is always visible was directly over the
earth, but later the axis was inclined. The Milky Way is the reflection
of the light of those stars that are not illuminated by the sun. Comets
are a conglomeration of planets that throw out flames, and shooting
stars are the sparks hurled out by the air. Winds arise from the air
rarefied by the sun. Thunder is the clashing of clouds; lightning, the
friction of clouds; an earthquake, the sinking of air into the earth.
Animals first came to be from moist, hot, and earthy stuffs, but later
from one another; and males come from the right side and females
from the left side [of the uterus]. 46
One notes that his hypothesis on the origin of animals may owe something
to Anaximander, and that his other thoughts about the origin of natural phenomena ascribe nothing to divine operation. Anaxagoras also taught that the
sun was “a fiery mass of burning metal,”47 and it was for saying this he was
charged with impiety. One is left to wonder if Anaxagoras’s claim was interpreted as a denial of the divinity of the sun god Helios, since speculation about
the composition of a natural object in itself could scarcely amount to impiety.
Still, he was no more impious than the pious Xenophanes, who had taught
that the sun was a mass of burning clouds.
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Anaxagoras speaks for all early Greek cosmologists when he asserts that
nothing comes into being or passes out of being. The atomists were later to say,
“Nothing can come from nothing.” No name of a god, or even the word “god”
can be detected in the extant set of quotations held to be genuine. However,
Anaxagoras introduces an external cause for motion. The archē is not sufficient to explain movement by itself. Yet nous does not create, but simply instigates motion and separates the things that are already there. Anaxagoras’s
Mind differs in an important way from Xenophanes’ One God, who shakes all
things with his mind, or from the logos of Heraclitus, which is still somehow
bound up with god. Nous is a completely abstract principle: a mind without an
owner. The fact that it stands apart from the rest of being and controls it leaves
open the possibility of someone saying, “Anaxagoras, you describe a thing that
has all the powers of god, yet you shrink from giving it the name.” In this he
deviated from his predecessors.
The most striking phase in the marginalization of god came toward the
end of the fifth century b.c.e. with the theories of the early atomists Leucippus
and Democritus. Democritus is usually described as the pupil of Leucippus.
The two atomists collectively took certain elements of Anaxagoras’s teaching.
One of them is the idea that matter (for them, atoms) escaped from an initially confined space and expanded into a boundless universe (the great whirl).
Another is that there are infinite worlds. Still another is the idea that the seeds
of all things were always in existence.
The atomists, however, avoided a dilemma that had caused Anaxagoras
so much grief. The latter appears to have been influenced (indeed, dogged) by
Parmenides’ teachings that being is one and continuous, and the void does not
exist. (“Nothing cannot exist.”) This is why he posited everything (or almost
everything) as eternally fully formed, and existing in a jumble. The atomists
suffered from no such difficulty. Matter always existed, and so did the void
(otherwise how could there be movement?). Moreover, although the constituent pieces of matter (atoms) are eternal, they continually form new combinations of things, so that things change and increase (and also decrease). Most
importantly, these constituent parts move on their own accord; they require no
exterior principle of motion.
On the other hand, just as for Anaxagoras there was an initial state of
things, so too for Leucippus: “The world came into being as follows: many
bodies of all sorts of shapes move by abscission from the infinite into a great
void; they come together there and produce a single whirl, in which colliding
with one another and revolving in all manner of ways, they begin to separate
apart, like to like.”48 The essential differences from Anaxagoras’s model are
that matter exists in the form of atoms, not as fully formed things; and no
part of the process described is steered by Mind. But how does it occur? Two
apparently contradictory explanations are provided: chance (or randomness)
and necessity. But the final word should go to Leucippus himself, who claims
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necessity as the reason: “Nothing occurs by chance, but everything for a reason and by necessity.”49 “Necessity” (anankē) we take to mean the invisible law
of the cosmos that is eternal, but no god created it or administers it.
Nearly two hundred years of continuous cosmological speculation came
to a temporary pause with the work of the atomists. But the implication for
theology and religion were profound. In the last stages of this long process,
when the early Milesians had faded from memory, three possible conclusions
were left: (1) God did not create the universe, but a single god guides it with
his mind (or according to a plan). 2) God did not create nor does he steer the
universe, but a mysterious force called Mind began the process of separation of
things and controls the process eternally. (3) God had nothing at all to do with
the universe, which operates according to its own laws. The thinking man is
left with the alternative of atheism, or accepting the “god of the philosophers.”
The implications of these early ideas about god and nature on the
interpretation of myth were profound. They established a new paradigm.
Although Hesiod’s ideas on the origins of everything retained some relevance, his stories about the gods as well as Homer’s had to be rejected.
They contained serious misrepresentations of the divine nature and retailed
narratives that defied credibility. Either they had to be jettisoned or reinterpreted in ways that accorded with the new paradigm. But the price of
removing the anthropomorphic gods was steep: the gods had to be stuffed
back into nature, whether as the divine element of the archē, or as the principle of a magnet. There may not have been a “god delusion,” but there
surely was a god trap. If the old gods were to be removed, what was going to
replace them? People could worship Homer’s Zeus, “who wears the aegis,”
but could they relate to Xenophanes’ god, who just sits and thinks? Could
the “man in the street” sacrifice to Anaxagoras’ Mind (assuming that it was
interpreted as divine)? Or would he prefer to offer incense to the divinized
elements of the Ionians? Somehow the gods had become unglued ever since
Xenophanes rendered the poets’ gods as fictions (plasmata). There were no
longer just different gods, but different sorts of gods. Philosophers could
declare god to be one with the world, but divinity was no longer at one with
itself.
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4
Flirting with Atheism
The work carried out over two centuries by the so-​called Presocratics had
profound and irreversible effects on Greek thought, and indeed on the entire
history of Western philosophy and science. The cosmos was material and
its mysteries could be revealed only by discovering the laws of nature. Even
Anaxagoras’s nous was material.1 Its superiority over the rest of the material
world lay in the fact that it was “unmixed”—​it was some kind of pure material
substance. Plato in the fourth century was able to retard the exclusively materialist view of the world.2 He was the first to argue that there could be being that
was wholly separate from matter; this type of being could not be grasped by
the senses, but by the mind alone. The Good, arguably identifiable with god,
was the highest expression of this nonmaterial being. Plato’s pupil Aristotle,
who appears resolutely materialist in most of his writings, softened his stance
when it came to God, positing a divine being without magnitude (Meta. 1073a).
But all this came later.
Other segments of the population with limited education were probably
aware of new trends in religious thought, but skeptical of them. The popular
playwright Aristophanes pandered to this particular crowd in his play Clouds.
In it the author hilariously lampoons scientific experiments, and depicts
Socrates floating in a basket at the end of a rope as he attempts to observe the
sun and the heavens. Socrates had indeed engaged in cosmological theorizing
before he famously rejected natural science in favor of ethics. The satire shows
that the radical new movements (Aristophanes lumps them together as “the
School of Thinkery”) had penetrated popular consciousness to some extent.
It would seem that the new scientific theories affected the beliefs of at
least the educated classes, even if most of them were not themselves scientists
or philosophers, but simply consumers of books and ideas. We recognize these
people today. They are the busy professional people who read popular history in
their spare time rather than play squash. They like to discuss their latest read
with their professional friends, if only for the fun of one-​upsmanship. That
such a class existed at least in fifth-​century Athens is shown by the demanding
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nature of the dramas people attended. The proliferation of theater festivals and
the expansion of the dramatic repertoire to include historical subjects and less
familiar mythological themes point to the existence of a cultivated theater-​
going public.3 We also find descriptions of drinking parties where topics like
the meaning of love were discussed in a serious way, as in Plato’s Symposium.
The popularity of the Sophist movement, at least among the well-​born youth,
is another indicator of what might be called “popular intellectual life.” When
the same class of people got around to discussing the nature of the gods, there
were probably not too many who invoked Homer as their authority.
While the worship of the gods was not bound up with ethics, or if so only
loosely, the gods one worshipped were certainly attached to their myths. This
is made most obvious by the fact that the images of the gods with all their
attributes correspond to descriptions in the poems. Moreover, the Homeric
Hymns—​poems written in praise of individual gods and goddesses—​provide
the stories of the gods that are to be praised.
However, Xenophanes, followed even more forcefully by Plato, left a deep
tear in the fabric. Things could never be quite the same again. Whether one
worshiped one god or many, he, she, or they did not engage in the immoral
and disgraceful things Homer and Hesiod said the gods did. Moreover, a god
did not rush all over the place, attending to this and that, but sat calmly in one
place, accomplishing everything just by thinking about it. The result was that
all the old myths about the gods had to be tossed out, or reinterpreted—​but
we’ll come to that possibility later. However, they could not be taken literally
by sensible people. (The colleagues in the agora or at the gym would roll their
eyes.) From Xenophanes’ day forward, there was a new class of gods for fashionable people who chose to believe in gods at all. These were the “philosophers’ gods.” We shall have more to say about them below.
The foundations of Greek “atheism” had been laid in the sixth and early
fifth centuries. They manifested themselves throughout the fifth. Whereas
today there are many people who are proud to call themselves atheists and
write books to convince others to join them, this is a new phenomenon. For
centuries, indeed millennia, it was extremely dangerous to be labeled an atheist. Up to the 1960s, atheism, though legal in most Western countries, was
socially frowned upon. Writing in the Victorian Age, Darwin held back from
publishing his theory of evolution for fear that it would be labeled “atheist,”
and this would break his dear wife’s heart. To this very day it is used as a
term of reproach, especially when coupled with labels such as “Marxist” or
“Communist.”
Today we use the word “atheist” for those who assert categorically that god
(God) does not exist, or claim that the chances of his nonexistence are much
better than those of his existence. Modern atheists (the so-​called new atheists4)
also openly attack religion and catalogue the evils they believe it perpetrates. We
reserve the word “agnostic” for those who aren’t sure of God’s existence, neither
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affirming nor denying it. Agnostics are regarded as “part of the problem” by
some new atheists, as they are seen as abetting the causes of theists and retarding the growth of a positive atheism.5 There is also a sizable group of people
who claim to believe in “some kind of higher power,” though when pressed to
say more, they have trouble explaining what they mean by the phrase. The use
of the word “atheist” was different in Greek antiquity. Technically it referred to
denial of the gods worshipped in a given polis, or like Zeus, throughout Greece.
Atheism of that sort was a crime. There was also the crime of impiety, or asebeia, the failure to reverence the gods, or the showing of disrespect.6
The term atheos, “godless,” was also applied to a number of people who
simply displayed casual or somewhat skeptical attitudes about religion.
Practically all of the prosecutions for atheism we know about took place in
Athens, and they occurred late in terms of our study so far. They began with
Anaxagoras and continued to the end of the fourth century. In most cases, we
do not have a clear idea of the basis for the charges. None of the philosophers
or scientists mentioned so far came out and said, “I do not believe in Zeus.”
The laws against atheism were well known, and people did not care to run
afoul of them. Aristotle reputedly left Athens because he did not want the
Athenians to sin twice against philosophy—​an obvious reference to the execution of Socrates. The laws seemed to have been applied inconsistently and were
directed against people who somehow had made themselves unpopular. In
Aristotle’s case, the charge of impiety was particularly flimsy. Aristotle was
accused of reciting a paian (“a hymn of praise”) to a mortal. The paian was
supposed to be reserved for the gods.7
As we have already seen, a number of the philosophers “flirted” with atheism simply by ignoring the role of the gods in their cosmological schemes, or
by redefining the traditional gods. In the last half of the fifth century, we find
expressions of skepticism about the gods or religion among the sophists (itinerant teachers who taught the skills of argumentation) and the playwrights.
They show the spread of such attitudes outside the class of professional philosophers. Let us start with the sophists.
Perhaps the most famous of this group was Protagoras of Abdera (ca.
490–​420 b.c.e.). His renown for wisdom was so great that Pericles invited
him to draw up a constitution for an Athenian colony. His famous statement
about the existence of the gods and their nature reflects a pure agnosticism:
About the gods I cannot say either that they are or that they are not,
nor what sort they are in their form; for there are many things that
hinder knowledge: a lack of clarity [of the subject] and the brevity of
human life.8
The same sophist also taught, “man is the measure of all things, the things
that are how they are, and the things that are not how they are not.”9 The
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statement was strongly disliked by thinkers as far apart in their views as
Democritus and Plato. For both of them, things are as they are whether we
know them or not. Yet Protagoras gives us an early preview of the falling tree
paradox.10 If no one is there to know or observe things, in what sense do they
exist? In other words, all things that are exist insofar as humans know them.
(It is worth noting that even Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is based
on the existence of a human observer.) This statement also has relevance to
belief in the gods. If highly intelligent people cannot reach certainty about the
nature of the gods, it is unlikely that it will ever be reached. Thus, humans are
the judges of the things that are not. Because of his statement about the gods,
Protagoras was charged with impiety, and his writings were publicly burned
a little after 421 b.c.e.
Around the same time, a little-​k nown poet, Diagoras of Melos, who
wrote in Athens in the last decades of the fifth century, was charged and
condemned to death for impiety. The trial took place in 415 b.c.e. His alleged
crime was revealing the Eleusinian mysteries, a breach that would indeed
have been a terrible sacrilege if true. The most famous of the Greek mystery religions, the cult was dedicated to the goddess Demeter and had an
especially close connection to Athens. Though some aspects of the ritual are
known, its secret mysteries had to be guarded on pain of a charge of impiety.11 Diagoras escaped death by fleeing Athens. His surviving poetry does
not betray traces of atheism. However, an anecdote is told about him that
certainly would link him to the “atheists” of his day. It is said that he once
stood before a bank of costly votive gifts dedicated to the gods for saving the
donors from drowning at sea. Diagoras remarked that the gifts “would have
been much more numerous if all those who had drowned had also been able
to set one up.”12 If present-​day atheists had wit of such quality, they would
probably attract more converts.
Two writers of the same period, one a sophist, the other a playwright,
explored the theory that primitive man developed his concept of god either as
a power for satisfying basic human needs, or alternatively as an agent of justice
in a brutal world. The first of these is Prodicus of Ceos, a sophist and contemporary of Socrates. Some sources refer to him as an atheist, but he apparently
escaped prosecution. Little of his work survives, but the statement that led him
to be branded atheos is preserved by several later sources (in several versions).13
One version says the following:
The ancients called the sun, moon, and fountains gods, and all
things in general that benefit our lives on account of the usefulness
received from them, just as Egyptians called the Nile a god. And
for this reason bread is called Demeter, wine Dionysus, water
Poseidon, fire Hephaestus, and likewise each of the things that are
beneficial.14
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Prodicus’s statement raises a very interesting anthropological question—​
one too complex to be dealt with here at length, and possibly too difficult to be
answered at all. This is the baffling issue of personification. Modern readers
of poetry will be familiar with this term as a poetic device, a commonly used
figure of speech (“O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?”—​1 Cor. 15:55–​6). For more than two millennia poets themselves were
conscious of using this figure of speech. The Greek grammarians even gave
it a name: prosopopoeia (to treat something that is not a person as a person).
Homer and Hesiod’s works are filled with names of divine beings that look to
us like nothing more than indicators of psychological conditions—​Strife and
Fear being good examples from Homer, Wisdom and Law and Memory from
Hesiod. Yet these are called gods and goddesses, just as Night and Sleep and
Death are gods in Hesiod’s work.
Thus, some of the personifications represent psychological states; others represent physical conditions or even processes. Yet they are all gods,
and some even get married and have children. Hesiod’s panorama of divine
beings is particularly confusing. It includes natural phenomena like earth
(Gaia), sky (Ouranos), and ocean (Oceanos), psychological or mental functions such as wisdom (Metis) and memory (Mnemosyne), abstractions such
as law (Themis) and justice (Dike), and anthropomorphic gods (Zeus, Hera,
Aphrodite).15 As late as the fourth century b.c.e., altars were set up and sacrifices made to things we would consider abstractions, for example, Rumor and
Peace.16 Thales’ dictum “all things are full of gods” takes on an entirely different meaning in the context of Hesiod’s divine personifications.
Prodicus was well aware of the different religious practices in his culture; he had also read his Homer and Hesiod. He would have realized that the
human tendency to make divinities out of mental processes or abstractions
could be transferred to physical things as well. To him it was all part of the
“mythic” or primitive thinking process. Zeus needed wisdom, justice, and a
good memory, so he married Metis, Themis, and Mnemosyne. But as a physical being he also needed bread, so he married Demeter, “the all-​nourishing.”
Either from reading Hesiod or by independent speculation, Prodicus, as cited
above, attained the insight that the gods, whether representing mental or physical attributes, satisfied needs.
Sextus Empiricus, a Skeptic philosopher of the second or third century
c.e., lists Prodicus among the atheists, together with Diagoras of Melos and
Euhemerus.17 It is easy to see how his contemporaries and posterity could construe Prodicus’s words to mean that gods are just names given to things in
nature that benefit humans, and that humans deify them out of some kind of
religious feeling. In that case, the association of Prodicus with Euhemerus,
who had taught that gods were originally human kings or heroes whom men
in ancient times deified after their deaths out of gratitude for their services, is
understandable.
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One can object, of course, that the inference is not a fair one, and that
Prodicus’s theory about the mental processes of early men does not of
itself constitute denial of the gods.18 There is no irreverence in recognizing that the gods were identified and named by the benefits they confer on
humans—​Demeter as bread, Aphrodite as sexual love, Dionysus as wine—​
or in claiming that these were all beneficial to humans. The gods retained
these associations with nature even after they received their human shape in
the poetic works, and even after they became the subjects of myths. This is
shown by a fragment of an earlier fifth-​century writer, Epicharmus, known
as a writer of mythological satires. The following passage survives in a Latin
paraphrase:
This is that Jupiter whom I name, whom the Greeks call the air; he
is also wind and cloud, and later rain; and from the rain comes cloud
and wind afterwards, and finally air (again). And so all the things
I mention to you are Jupiter, because Jupiter helps mortal men and
cities and animals.19
While the case of Prodicus is discussable, there can be no doubt about the
atheism of Critias, an associate of Socrates and a contemporary of Prodicus,
or at least about the atheism of the character whom he portrays in his play,
Sisyphos Satyrikos. About forty lines of the play survive.20 The beginning of the
passage will remind some readers of Hobbes’s state of nature, in which life is
described as “nasty, brutish, and short.”
There was a time when the life of men was disordered, brutish in
strength, and servile, when there was no reward or anything for
the noble, or punishment for the wicked. It was then, it seems, that
men established laws to punish in order that justice might rule
and also hold insolence in bondage, and a man suffered loss if he
committed a crime. It was then when laws were made manifest,
and they prevented (men) from committing acts of violence. But it
seems to me they did them secretly at that time. It was then that
some clever-​t hinking assemblyman discovered the fear of the gods
for mortals, so that there might be terror for evil-​doers, even if they
do or say or think things in secret. Thereupon the divine being
would move like a daimon flourishing in imperishable life, hearing
and seeing with his mind, reflecting deeply as he notices these
things, being possessed of a divine nature. He will hear everything
spoken amongst mortals and shall be able to see everything done
by them. Even should you plot your wickedness in silence, this
will not escape the notice of the gods, for their power of thought is
exceptional.21
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Critias’s statement would have been highly offensive to Xenophanes, had he lived
to hear it. Xenophanes had given the Greek world his one, quiet, thinking, and
all-​seeing god as a great improvement on the immoral Homeric deities. Yet about
a century and a half later his divinity—​or one resembling it—​was savagely deconstructed by a writer of satyr plays. The gods who spy on us are only bogeymen,
dreamed up by cynical politicians as a means of keeping people in check. They
exist only in the human imagination. That Critias’s statement reflects a true atheism is undeniable, whether we receive it as Critias’s own conviction, or simply as
a sentiment attested by a fictional character. As Drachmann says of the speech,
“… it is our first direct and unmistakable evidence of ancient atheism.”22
Critias’s bogeyman deity added fresh fuel to Aristophanes’ parody of
the critics of the traditional gods. He lumps them all together in his riotous
comedy, Frogs:
Dionysus: (to Aeschylus and Euripides): Now you two pray, before you speak
your lines.
Aeschylus: Demeter, who informed and fed my mind, may I prove worthy of
the Mysteries.
Dionysus: (to Euripides): It’s your turn now. Put some incense on.
Euripides: No, thank you. The gods I pray to are other ones than these.
Dionysus: Personal gods, new coinages?
Euripides: For sure.
Dionysus: Pray, then, to your private, nonconformist gods.
Euripides: Upper Air, my nutriment! Pivoted, wagging Tongue! Intellectual
Power! Nostrils that scent our faults!23
In a single stroke, Aristophanes managed to lampoon Anaximenes’ air gods
(enhanced by allegory to extend into the aether), Anaxagoras’s Mind, and
Critias’s bogeyman, itself meant as a reductio ad absurdum. The comic playwright obviously assumed that his audience was au courant with the fashionable, but controversial, views of divinity that were circulating in Athens; how
else could he draw a laugh? But he also knew that satire could be a dangerous
weapon, and that it is safer to draw a laugh at the expense of innovators than
offend the larger body of traditionalists. He clearly made the right choice, as
Frogs won first prize at the Lenaean Festival in 405 b.c.e.
Although Frogs is centrally concerned with the conceits of poetic style,
and each of the three great tragedians receives a fair share of the drubbing,
Euripides is singled out here for special attention because of his reputed atheism. There is no direct evidence that Euripides denied the existence of the
gods, or that he believed in any of the “personal gods” or “new coinages” that
Aristophanes mentions. Rather, Euripides’ reputation as an atheist seems to
have been based on his frequent portrayal of the gods as cruel or unjust in his
plays. Then, as today, the argument was advanced that if the gods committed
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injustice, or allowed it to happen when they had the power to prevent it, then
they are no gods. This is the argument referred to as theodicean (that is, related
to the justice of god) that has dominated religious debate for aeons. It is made
explicit in a surviving fragment of Euripides’ play Bellerophon:
And then to say that there are gods in the heavens! Nay, there are
none there, if you are not foolish enough to be seduced by the old talk.
Think for yourself about the matter, and do not be influenced by my
words. I contend that the tyrants kill the people wholesale, take their
money and destroy cities in spite of their oaths; and although they
do this, they are happier than people who, in peace and quietness,
lead god-​fearing lives. And I know small states which honour the
gods, but must obey greater states, which are less pious, because their
spearmen are fewer in number.24
Euripides thus gives us evidence that people expressed atheistic views based
on the alleged injustice of the gods and the fact that the wicked and powerful
lead happy lives, while the rest of humankind suffers miserably in order to
support the happiness of the few. One can draw several conclusions from the
passage in Bellerophon: (1) the gods do not exist, or they would have put a stop
to such behavior long ago; (2) gods exist, but they are impotent to suppress
evil, and therefore are unworthy of our veneration; (3) gods exist, but they are
wicked and cruel. Readers of Euripides’ plays Bacchae and Hippolytus would be
justified in drawing conclusion 3 from the dénouements of those plays.25 Today,
however, we would be bound to exonerate Euripides from a charge of atheism,
as we distinguish between the views of an author and those of characters represented in his works. The Athenians were not so charitable.
The most controversial case surrounding ancient atheism is that of
Epicurus. He was widely maligned as an atheist in antiquity not only in
the Christian period, but also by “pagan” philosophers of his own day and
later. Even those who were aware that he taught the existence of the gods and
regarded them as good accused him of being disingenuous, claiming that
he made them up just so that he would not be accused of atheism.26 Born
in Athens (340/​1–​272/​1 b.c.e.), Epicurus later established a school there
called “the Garden,” where women were admitted along with men. During
his youth in Ionia (near Colophon, the home of Xenophanes), he studied
with a philosopher who espoused atomist teachings. In his own philosophy
Epicurus modified the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus in at least one
important way: he replaced necessity (anankē), which restricted the motion
of atoms to a downward movement, with his notion of the swerve, so that
the atoms, through trial and error, could find their like and form permanent
things. Because atoms were hooked, an irreverent person today might say that
they engage in temporary “hook-​ups” until they settle down in a permanent
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relationship. However, Epicurus remained true to the masters’ doctrine that
the only things that exist are atoms and the void, the empty space needed for
the movement of atoms.
Atomism played directly into Epicurus’s ethical philosophy. Since all existent things are made of atoms that come together and eventually come apart, the
human soul must also be made of atoms and come apart when the body dies. At
that point all consciousness ceases. Because there is no longer any sensation after
death, humans need not fear what will happen to them. By removing the fear of
death, one has the chance to attain happiness (defined as the absence of perturbation) in this life. The gods exist and are immortal, but they have no care for
the affairs of mortals; they neither reward nor punish, nor can they be prayed to.
Epicurus allowed for the veneration of the gods and their emulation as models of
unperturbedness (ataraxia); he even condoned participation in civic rituals. He
also censured the atheists just discussed, including Prodicus and Diagoras. But
like the earlier atomists he saw no role for the gods in the creation or sustenance
of the cosmos. He did not believe in any form of providence—​even the limited
kind one finds in Plato or Aristotle, in which god (Plato) or nature (Aristotle)
makes everything for the best. The gods are happy because they have nothing to
do with the affairs of men. God is happy “because he cares for nothing.”27
Epicurus’s reputation was also not helped by the work of his most fervent
disciple, the Roman poet Lucretius (94–​55 b.c.e). Little is known of Lucretius’s
life apart from the doubtful report of St. Jerome in the fourth century c.e.
that he suffered from insanity and committed suicide by overdosing on a love
potion. Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things, which more or less accurately
encapsulates Epicurus’s teachings, harks back to the tradition of Empedocles
in using poetry as a medium for philosophical ideas. Modern research shows
that many lines of the poem are close translations of the Epicurean texts that
survive. But on one crucial point Lucretius deviated from his master. Epicurus
had urged tolerance of religion, even recommending participation in order
to contemplate the happiness of the gods. Lucretius would have none of that.
Religion, which he equated with superstition, was the root of all human evils.28
If there ever was a poster boy for ancient atheists, Lucretius was it. In a famous
passage near the opening of book 1, he wrote:
When human life lay foul before men’s eyes,
crushed to the dust beneath religion’s weight
(from the high realm of heaven she showed her face
an hideous grimace of terror to mortal men)
a man of Greece [Epicurus] first dared to raise the eye
of mortal against her, first stood ground against her.
…
And now religion in turn beneath our feet
is trampled; the victory makes us match for heaven.29
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Epicurus and Lucretius were generally viewed as a single soul and mind by
almost everyone from Roman antiquity onward until separated by modern
scholars. Lucretius had attributed to his mentor many of the vehement anti-​
religious feelings that were his alone.
Anaxagoras, Diagoras, Protagoras, Socrates, and Aristotle—​all faced or
were threatened with a charge of atheism or impiety. Anaxagoras, Diagoras,
Euripides, and Aristotle fled Athens, thereby very likely escaping a death
sentence. Protagoras was tried, but exonerated. Epicurus was never charged.
Socrates alone suffered the extreme penalty. There is no clear evidence in
the surviving writings of any of these thinkers (Socrates left no writings, but
there are several reports of what he supposedly said) of categorical denials
of the existence of the gods. Outright expressions of atheism were confined
to characters in literary works: Critias’s Sisyphus and Euripides’ Bellerophon.
Protagoras’s statement about the gods is agnostic. For the rest, their “crimes”
consisted of debunking of popular myths, redefining the gods in accordance
with current standards of justice and morality, and naturalistically explaining
the workings of the universe that dispense with divine agency.
The tally of executions in Athens was one, and book burnings two. In
comparison to the reign of terror that occurred under the Inquisition, the
religious persecutions in sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​century England, or the
Salem witch trials in America, life for intellectuals in Athens was not so bad.
But the fact that oppression and censorship occurred at all is clear proof that
the intellectuals had made a strong impact on traditional beliefs, especially
beliefs about the gods. More than a century of revolutionary developments in
natural philosophy followed by a half century of the sophistic movement had
made an indelible mark. The schools of philosophical skepticism that developed in the late fourth century b.c.e. and continued into late antiquity were the
heirs of the sophists.30
What rattled the authorities as much as atheism was the pervasive idea
of the sophists that truth was relative to the perceptions of individuals. The
notion that hot and cold as determined by each person’s perception of them31
might be extended, like elastic, into the realms of physics and theology was
deeply unsettling to many. So was the idea that every people considers its own
customs the best, and that it is madness to mock or deride the customs of others, even when they appear to be absurd or barbarous.32 Some of the oppression
was politically motivated; some can be explained by a climate of fear induced
by the long Peloponnesian Wars and their aftermath. But every society has its
share of anti-​intellectuals and traditionalists—​people who are not amused by
anti-​religious jokes like that of Diagoras, or the reputed epitaph on the tomb
of Anaxagoras, which claimed that the deceased was now the equal of a god,
because neither of them existed.
There are some probable explanations for the fact that persecution of intellectuals was not worse. There was no real “religious right” like that found in
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America today. The religion of the polis had prescribed sacrifices, but it had no
prescribed creed. There were no articles of faith in which everyone was compelled to believe. Most importantly, there were no sacred books, no revelation,
no Word of God. Philosophers were not required to validate their arguments
by citing passages from the Iliad or the Theogony in the way that medieval
theologians were expected to justify their teachings with scripture.
This relatively free climate created in ancient Greece cleared the path for
public discourse about the things people held most sacred and allowed for the
dissemination of ideas in published form. The ancient world remained open
to discussion and debate regarding ideas about god and the origin of the cosmos. Rome, provincial and conservative in its early years, became a champion
of intellectual freedom, welcoming Greek intellectuals of all persuasions to
Rome after its conquest of Greece in 146 b.c.e. However, even though the
Romans learned to speak and think in Greek,33 they did not adopt Greek law.
Atheism was not a capital crime in Rome. Vergil, Rome’s greatest poet, studied
with an Epicurean philosopher at Naples (though the doctrine left little if any
trace in his writings). Cicero’s philosophical treatises were heavily influenced
by Greek skepticism.
This state of affairs lasted until Christianity achieved complete hegemony
in the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century c.e. Even then, the state
was mainly interested in suppressing pagan religious practices and Christian
heresy. This, of course, would have included open expressions of atheism, but
not the books that supported it. Philosophy limped on in Athens until the
Emperor Justinian shut the Academy in 529 c.e. However, the books of the
ancient philosophers were never banned, either in the East or in the West,
while the poets continued to be read and studied in medieval monasteries.
Even Lucretius survived, thanks to the dedication of the ninth-​century monks
who copied his work in “barbarian” Europe. For the most part, Christians
seemed interested in burning one another’s books, not the pagan classics.
The infamous “Index of Prohibited Books” had to await the glories of the
Renaissance; it was first published in 1559.
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5
Attacking Poetry
As we saw in previous chapters, the attacks on the two poets “who educated
Greece” began very early. Criticisms by Xenophanes and Heraclitus have
already been discussed. Another of the great thinkers of that period was
the mathematician Pythagoras, best known for his theorem of the right triangle. Born on the Isle of Samos in the sixth century, he later migrated to
southern Italy to the settlement of Croton, where he became “a legislator for
the Italians.”1 As Pythagoras, like Socrates, left no writings, very little that
is certain is known of his genuine teachings or his life. One apocryphal tale
relates how he descended into Hades and encountered the shades of Homer
and Hesiod. He saw the spirit of Hesiod, tied to a column of iron, howling;
Homer’s shade is suspended from a tree and surrounded by snakes. Such were
their punishment for the vile things they had said about the gods.2 The legend
reinforces the impression that there was growing criticism of the two great
poets on the basis of what they said about the gods. Heraclitus’s criticism was
somewhat more “philosophical”; he criticized Hesiod for failing to understand
the unity of opposites. He also rebuked Homer for not understanding that
strife was not only necessary but good.3 However, it did not occur to anyone of
this early period to bring poetry itself into disrepute.
There is a very good reason for this. Poetry was the preferred medium of a
number of the early cosmologists and philosophers. Xenophanes, Parmenides,
and Empedocles all employed verse for the discussion of philosophical issues.
The use of verse was believed to be a more effective medium than prose for
impressing the memory. Poetry was also believed to lend “sweetness” to
thoughts and provide natural pleasure. Finally, it added a feeling of gravity, or
dignity, to words that expressed the great mysteries of the cosmos. Moreover,
if indeed some sixth-​century thinkers viewed Homer and Hesiod as the earliest cosmologists, those thinkers would have seen themselves as following in a
great tradition, even if the purpose of their writing was to contradict the earlier
poets. This speculation received support from Aristotle writing two centuries
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later. He was willing to entertain the notion that “one might suspect that
Hesiod was the first to look for such a thing [that is, the cause of the cosmos].”4
Aristotle, however, also recognized that by his day the word “poetry”
had become ambiguous. For some it continued to mean simply a particular
medium of speech involving a particular way of arranging words and sounds
in rhythmical patterns. Any writer who employed verse was by definition a
poet, and his work, poetry. For others, a new meaning had emerged. Poetry
was the medium for expressing myths. Greek epic was about myths and
legends, and drama even more so. Lyric poets like Pindar also incorporated
myths into their poems. On the other hand, writers who purported to treat a
subject factually were turning to the medium of prose. Even before Plato, philosophers had begun to use prose, and prose was the medium for both Plato
and Aristotle. Aristotle attempted to disambiguate the problem of the content
of poetry; however, he did not pose a dichotomy between poems that contained myths and those that did not, but rather between poems that contained
mimēsis (imitation) and those that do not. In his preliminary discussion of the
concept of poetry in the Poetics he wrote:
True, people do attach the making to the name of a metre and speak
of elegiac-​makers and hexameter-​makers; they think, no doubt, that
“makers” [that is, poets] is applied to poets not because they make
mimēseis but as a general term meaning ‘verse-​makers,’ since they call
‘poets’ even those who publish a medical or scientific theory in verse.
But as Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their
metre, the latter had better be called a scientific writer, not a poet, if
we are to use ‘poet’ of the former.5
The Greek word mimēsis means literally “an act of imitation.” For Aristotle,
this presumably included everything that we call fiction. It is possible that
he felt that it was no easy task to disentangle the historical from the mythical
material in the early poets, and so avoided the division “mythological” and
“non-​mythological.” It seems that his teacher Plato had suffered no qualms
about doing just that. Plato does not explicitly refer to the didactic (scientific
and philosophical) poetry mentioned by Aristotle. Rather, he simply equates
the term “poetry” with mythological content, and “poets” with purveyors of
myth. Thus the subject matter of poetry is fiction. And fiction is, well, false.
And what is false cannot be good, unless placed in the service of some noble
purpose (Plato’s “noble lie”).
At the end of his long discussion of poetry in book 10 of the Republic, Plato
refers to the “old quarrel between poetry and philosophy.”6 He then cites several disparaging comments about poetry that apparently were proverbial: “the
yapping bitch that barks at her master,” “a great man amid the vanity of fools,”
and “the rabble of know-​all heads,” and “thin thinkers starve.” Myths are
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fictions (plasmata), as Xenophanes had already noted, and the creators of these
fictions are poets. Plato writes in reference to Homer and Hesiod, “For it’s the
poets who told men, and still tell them, the false stories they themselves compose
[emphasis added].”7
The responsibility for telling lies to men is laid directly at the door of the
poets. Plato does not refer here, as he does elsewhere, to inspiration (Ion 533–​
34) or madness (Phaedrus 245a)—​the notion that the gods (Apollo, the Muses)
plant a voice in poets and tell them what to sing. On the contrary, he imagines
poets sitting at home consciously thinking up lies to spread to their unsuspecting neighbors. This is not unlike the thought process that Critias attributed to his politician, who, faced with unsolved crimes on his watch, stayed up
all night fretting, until he found a way to frighten men into virtue by instilling
fear of a god who could see everything.
There is something jarring to current thinking about the origin of myths
in all this. We are accustomed to think of myths as stories that belong to an
untraceable past. We can sometimes identify innovations in these stories—​
intrusions of elements that can be pinpointed to a particular time and culture
(for example, aetiologies of institutions, mention of a particular local type of
dress or diet)—​but the main structures nearly always elude dating and localization. It is now known that a good many myths we think of as Greek come
from elsewhere, particularly the near East. We prefer to think that the Greeks
adapted these “inherited” stories to their own conditions. Accordingly, poets—​
whether epic writers like Homer or dramatists like Sophocles—​took stories
that were once transmitted orally and put them into a new form. Today we
would call this process “repackaging.” However, Plato was not the first Greek
thinker to espouse the theory that myths were invented by poets. About three
generations before Plato, the historian Herodotus spoke of Homer and Hesiod
as “the poets who composed (poiēsantes) our theogonies and described the
gods for us.”8 And three or four generations before Herodotus, Xenophanes
had attacked Homer and Hesiod for telling shameful stories about the gods.
However, Plato was well aware of another theory of the creative process.
Plato knew his Hesiod well. Yet he chose to ignore Hesiod’s narrative of the
Muses who chided him on Mount Helicon into composing his song. Hesiod
essentially says to his readers, “Even if you don’t believe in the Muses, please
realize that the stories I am about to tell aren’t really my own. I didn’t make
them up. They are old stories that were recited long before me. All I did was to
put them together in a new way.” Plato’s oversight here is all the more strange,
since in other works he showed that he was clearly conscious of the notion
of poetic inspiration, and believed it to be indispensable for poetry of true
genius: “Third is the possession and madness of the Muses. Gripping the delicate and untouched mind, it rouses it to frenzy in songs and other poems, and
by its adornment of innumerable deeds of the ancients, it educates posterity.”9
There his words appear to approach Hesiod’s description of the process: the
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Muses insert a divine voice in the poet so that he can fittingly sing the things
they order. We find a contemporary echo of this idea in the words of Claude
Lévi-​Strauss, who wrote in his Myth and Meaning, “I don’t have the feeling that
I write my books. I have the feeling that my books get written through me.”10
Aristotle seems to have anticipated our modern distinction between
repackaging old stories and inventing new ones. In advising would-​be dramatists, he writes, “So one need not try to stick at any cost to the traditional stories, which are the subject of tragedies; indeed, the attempt would be absurd,
since even what is well known is well known only to a few, but gives pleasure
for all that.”11 Just before that he mentioned a play by Antheus, where “both
the names [of characters] and the events are made up.” Thus, Aristotle distinguished between traditional stories (he used the Greek word for “handed
down”) and those that are invented by writers of his day or just before.
Because Plato was pursuing a distinctly moral agenda in the Republic, he
chose to ignore the distinction between traditional and invented stories, of
which he was surely aware. In the first part of his discourse on poetry (Rep.,
book 2) Plato brings two accusations against the poets: (1) poets tell untrue
things (myths); (2) the myths are harmful to people, especially the young. In
making the first charge Plato shows his awareness that myths need not be
understood literally. He raises the possibility of understanding stories allegorically, and then discards the technique as unhelpful, since children cannot
distinguish the allegorical from the non-​allegorical. It is instructive to note
that his pupil Aristotle expressed no interest in the literal truth of stories and
made no reference to allegory:
In answer to the charge of not being true, one can say, “But perhaps
it is as it should be”: Sophocles, for example, said that he represented
people as they should be, and Euripides as they are here; this is the
answer. If it is neither true nor as it should be, one can reply, “But it
is what people say.”12
Aristotle knew that the charge came initially from Xenophanes, who, he admitted, may have been right, but his reaction was to shrug. The shrug is part and
parcel of Aristotle’s appeal to today’s readers and “consumers” of other forms
of mimetic culture such as film. We realize when we approach fiction, we
must suspend our disbelief, and look for a different kind of truth. Aristotle
put this most forcefully when he wrote, “That is why poetry is at once more
like philosophy and more worthwhile than history, since poetry tends to make
general statements, while those of history are particular.”13
Plato, however, had he debated with his pupil, would not have been satisfied with the words just quoted. It is well and good for poets to make general
statements, but they have a duty to ensure that the statements are true. There
is a disjunction between what Homer and Hesiod said about the gods and
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what the gods truly are. This is the essence of Xenophanes’ original critique
on which Plato built. Xenophanes was the first to realize that the idea of god
espoused by enlightened men of his generation was radically different from
the images projected by the epic poets. The paradigm had undergone a seismic shift. God was not like men either in physical form or mental activity.
There is one who is the most powerful. He is stationary and accomplishes
everything with the power of his mind. He doesn’t have to rush about from
one place to another to see what is going on, because he is able to know everything “from his holy resting place.”
Plato took this insight and developed it. A common motif of the Iliad and
the Odyssey is the shape-​shifting god. Homer seemed to insist that this power
belonged to the nature of divinity when he wrote, “in guise of foreign strangers gods visit cities in every manner of shape” (Od. 17, 485–​86). Plato portrays
Socrates discussing this passage in an exchange with his disciple Adimantus:
S. Then in general whatever is in a good condition, as a result of art or nature
or both, admits the minimal change from external influence?
A. So it seems.
S. But god and what is god’s is in every way exceedingly good?
A. Of course.
S. So from this point of view god can’t have “many shapes”?
A. No.
S. But might he change and vary himself?
A. He must if he varies at all.
S. Well, then, does he change himself for better or for worse?
A. For worse, inevitably, if he does vary: for we can’t say that a god is defective
in beauty or goodness.
S. Quite right. And that being so, Adimantus, do you think any god, or man,
would voluntarily make himself worse in any way?
A. Impossible.
S. Impossible, therefore, for god to want to vary himself. Every god, being
exceedingly beautiful and good, remains always simply, so far as
possible, in his own shape.
A. Necessarily so.14
We are left with this conclusion: God being god has the power to change himself, but because he is both exceedingly good and beautiful, he would never
desire to do this. Any change from perfection would be a change for the worse.
The true nature of god remains constant, and any story that says otherwise
is false.
Aristotle and Plato were surely talking at cross purposes. Aristotle would
not care if a play contained an episode in which a god appeared in disguise.
“Such is the story,” he would say, and probably add that shape shifting is not
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the point of the play. What matters is the general statement about human character and action that can be derived from the mimēsis. This is what people
in the audience take home with them. This is what brings poetry close to
philosophy.
However, even if we dismiss Plato’s concern with the literal truth of poetry
as wrongheaded, it is harder to disregard his second point, namely, that many
of the traditional myths are harmful. In arguing the case he goes well beyond
Xenophanes, whose sole concern was the truth quotient of the poets’ portrayal
of the gods. Xenophanes notes that the poets attribute to the gods everything
that is disgraceful among men, but stops short of pursuing the moral implications for society. Plato’s objective is very different. In the Republic he is envisioning the ideal polity. The correct education of its citizens is central to this
aim. It does no good to put a philosopher-​king in charge, or install a police
force (Plato’s “guardians”), if the majority of the citizens cannot tell right from
wrong. The means to right moral conduct is right education. Every harmful
influence must be removed. The gods must be portrayed in the best possible
light, and likewise the mortal role models, that is, the heroes. These models
must be impressed on the malleable minds of children like seals on wax.
In Plato’s day (and long afterward) the poems of Homer and Hesiod
were at the heart of the curriculum. Children grew up with these poems and
learned portions of them by rote. Nursemaids responsible for educating children at home would have provided another source of fable. Such were called
“old wives’ tales” then as they are now.15 When children got older, they would
become acquainted with other myths by attending the theater. Thus, a knowledge of many traditional stories was not dependent on literacy, though doubtless by the fourth century there was an educated class, at least in Athens, that
wanted their children to learn to read. But just as the Old Testament contains
a good number of stories you would not like your children to hear uncensored,
the same holds true for the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Theogony. Plato gives a
notorious example from the Theogony:
To begin with, the greatest falsehood, involving the greatest issues,
was wrongly told by the person who said that Ouranos did what
Hesiod said he did and that Kronos took his revenge upon him. What
Kronos did and what happened to him at his son’s hands is something
I should not want to be told without precaution to the young and
foolish, even if it had been true.16
Plato alludes here to the notorious episode near the beginning of the Theogony
in which Gaia complains to her son Kronos of Ouranos’s brutality, and Kronos
takes a sickle of iron and removes Ouranos’s testicles. An equally rebarbative episode follows: Kronos, in order to forestall attempts by his children to
overthrow him, swallows them whole (Theog. 137ff., 453ff.). Plato gives other
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examples concerning family violence in the Olympian household: Hera tied
up by her son, Hephaestus thrown out by his father for defending his mother,
and the battles of gods. He adds, “All this is inadmissible, whether it was composed allegorically or not. Young people can’t distinguish the allegorical from
the non-​allegorical, and what enters the mind at that age tends to become
indelible and irremovable.”17
The argument will resonate with many people today. Psychologists and
other experts seem to be locked in a never-​ending debate over the effects of
films, television, and video games on children and young adults. For adults
who predate the video game era, the levels of violence portrayed is often shocking. However, a direct link between heavy use of these media and violent crime
has so far eluded proof. Yet many adults continue to worry that even if their
kids who enjoy blowing up heads on screens don’t become axe murderers, they
might still suffer effects on their moral development. The same type of debate
carries over into pornography and sexuality. Plato’s response to the danger was
censorship. All the stories of the poets that present negative stereotypes of the
gods or of the heroes must be snipped out. Today parents block their children’s
channels and time the Internet access to go off before bedtime. They give their
darlings wholesome books and learning games as Christmas and birthday
presents. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.
Plato’s attack on poetry presented a quandary for legislators and educators
in his day. It was easy to applaud his deep concern for morality in education
and his desire to foster the best values (respect for the gods, one’s parents,
the homeland) in young citizens. On the other hand, he wanted to black out
large stretches of text in Greece’s two greatest poets, the ones “who educated
Greece.” Let us see what that would mean in our terms. Many jurisdictions in
North America are familiar with cases in which groups of parents (often only
a few people) appear before school boards and demand that a book be withdrawn from the curriculum or from school libraries. But imagine groups of
parents going to pastors of churches or teachers in Bible schools and demanding that large swaths of text in the Bibles used by the children be blacked out.
These would be the stories that portray God as cruel or unjust, or the patriarchs engaged in immoral or inappropriate behavior—​there is no shortage of
passages that would qualify. Imagine the reaction! The poems of Homer and
Hesiod may not have had religious sanction, but they were the most authoritative books the Greeks possessed. No one, even Plato, would be allowed to
tamper with them.
Whether his fellow citizens agreed with him or not, Plato surely touched
a chord when he leveled his moral criticism of poetry. The arguments he put
forth in book 2 of the Republic are easy for a lay person to understand. Plato,
however, reserved the last part of his critique for the philosophers. His most
original and lasting contribution to philosophy was his theory of ideas (forms).
According to this doctrine, which Plato formulates in book 10 of the Republic,
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ideas, which have no material reality of any kind, are the most real “things”
that exist. They are permanent and unchanging and therefore the only things
of which one can have true knowledge. (Plato gives the examples of numbers
and geometrical objects.) They are also the causes of material things, which
are merely copies of the ideas. These material copies are in a constant state
of change and for that very reason cannot be apprehended by the mind. They
belong to the realm of opinion. Plato illustrated his theory with his famous
“Allegory of the Cave.” In this parable we are all like persons imprisoned in
a dark cavern illuminated only by a fire that causes shadows to be cast on the
walls of the cave. These shadows constitute everything that the prisoners in
the cave are able to perceive. The prisoners naturally regard these shadows not
as representations but as real objects. However, one of the prisoners manages
to escape and ascend to the earth, where he can see things in the light of the
sun (which Plato identifies with “the Good”). He returns to the cave to teach
the prisoners how things “really” are, but they just laugh at him.
In book 10 of the Republic Plato applies his theory of ideas to the philosophy of art. He asserts that every art form, be it visual or verbal, is based on
imitation (mimēsis). Painters and poets alike strive to imitate things in the
material world as best they can. But these material objects are themselves only
copies of the reality in which they “participate,” namely, ideas or forms. Works
of art are therefore nothing but copies of copies—​at a third remove from reality.18 We can infer from this that mimēsis by its nature bears responsibility for
falsifying reality.
An argument of this type would most likely not make much impact on
ordinary citizens. Aristotle, however, was very aware of it and countered Plato’s
dismissive notion of mimēsis with his own more positive theory:
Mimesis is innate in human beings from childhood—​indeed we differ
from the other animals in being most given to mimesis and in making
our first steps in learning through it—​and pleasure in instances of
mimesis is equally general.19
Aristotle, who liked to base his conclusions on observation, had probably
noticed that infants learn to walk and speak by imitating adults or older children. He also realized that imitation was a source of pleasure in humans: “We
enjoy looking at the most exact portrayals of things we do not like to see in
real life, the lowest animals, for instance, or corpses.”20 Rather than oppose
his former teacher head on by attacking his theory of ideas, Aristotle opted
for presenting a more attractive alternative. Had ordinary people followed this
debate on aesthetic principles, they would have most likely sided with Aristotle
against Plato. What Aristotle had to say was tangible; it appealed to everyday
experience. But this philosopher did not attempt to deviate too far from Plato’s
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moral critique of the poets. The heroes represented in his ideal tragedies had
to be “first and foremost morally good.”21
Epicurus, whom we met in the previous chapter, was another “enemy of
poetry.” He would surely have been unhappy with Lucretius’s choice of poetry
as a medium, and worse, his invocation of the goddess Venus as his Muse.22
He would, however, have approved of Lucretius’s attack on mythical accounts
of the afterlife in book 3 of his poem, in which he discounts the terrors of the
underworld described by Homer in the Odyssey:
“No Tityos lies there, target of hellish buzzards.”23
Epicurus had no use for poetry and discouraged his disciples from reading it. It was a waste of time and took one’s attention away from philosophy.
I surmise that Epicurus, like Plato, equated poetry with mythology, and
mythology with lies about the gods’ true nature. Epicurus’s gods had bodies, yes, because all things that exist are material. But they were not the
anthropomorphic gods of Homer. Nor did they have anything to do with
humankind at any point, contrary to Homer’s interfering gods and Hesiod’s
claim in the Theogony that gods and men once dined together. Poetry and
the myths should be left alone. Nor would Epicurus have approved of Plato’s
decision to write “better myths,” for any type of fable distorts the truths of
philosophy.
The complete rejection of myth and its uses such as we find in Epicurus
(and earlier in Xenophanes) must be counted as one of the approaches used
in the anatomy of myth. If myths do not represent “the things that are,” but
rather “the things that are not,” only a foolish person would want to investigate
them. In this view, all attempts to interpret myths are moot.
To conclude, Aristotle may have won the battle over the theory of art, but
the larger war over the moral nature of poetry ended in a stalemate at best.
Moreover, Plato’s identification of poetry with myth, and myth with falsehood (seconded by Epicurus), was to survive the centuries. In the early part of
the Renaissance of our era, the humanist and novelist Boccaccio felt himself
impelled to mount up and tilt lances with the enemies of poetry once again.
The adage “poets are liars” enjoyed a long shelf life. Not only the content of
poetry, but poetry itself, was placed under lasting suspicion.
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The Beginnings of Allegory
We have just seen that Plato rejected the understanding of a work as “allegorically composed” as a suitable means of defending the traditional myths. He
did not attack allegorical interpretation itself, but simply excluded it from the
toolkit used for teaching literature to children. (Children take things literally;
they do not understand figurative speech until they are older.) Plato’s statement is revealing for two reasons. First, it teaches us that because some people
assumed that authors composed allegorically, it was legitimate to interpret allegorically. There was thus an assumption that there was a close relationship
between the act of communicating and the process of reception or, stated otherwise, that a reader’s understanding of a text corresponded to the author’s
intention. Second, his statement tells us that the assumption of a bond of
meaning between the writer and the reader, or the speaker and the listener,
was not new. Plato’s mention of allegory (composing and understanding) suggests that it was a familiar notion.1
Two questions pop up immediately: First, what did Plato mean by “allegory”? (His word for it was hyponoia, “the thought beneath”). Second, what
do we know about the application of allegory before Plato? The basic concept
is quite simple. The Greek term hyponoia (literally, “underthought”) refers to
a thought or idea lurking below the surface of what is spoken or written that
is at odds with what is expressed on the surface. Several centuries later, the
term was replaced by allegoria, “to say something different,” that is, different
from what the speaker or writer really means. Plutarch, in his On the Study of
Poetry, was, I think, the first to signal that allegoria had replaced hyponoia as
a hermeneutic term.2 They are really two words for the same thing. Initially,
allegoria was a rhetorical term that meant to express a thought as an extended
metaphor. But it came to mean to create an entire narrative in metaphorical
speech; it simultaneously meant to understand a narrative in that way. Thus,
both terms include both the compositional and interpretative aspects of the act
of communication.
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Modern scholarship has largely done away with the confusion between
the compositional and interpretative sense of the term by introducing the
word “allegoresis” to cover interpretation, reserving “allegory” for the literary
genre, or for parts of a work thought to be allegorically “encoded.” The process
of encoding an allegory entails a system of substitutions. The ancients regularly substituted the name of a god for the element with which the god was
associated. If, for example, we parse the proverb from Terence (Eunuchus 729),
“Without Bacchus and Ceres Venus grows cold,” we should not be tempted to
feel pity for a shivering goddess who has lost her friends, but understand that
we are being advised to eat bread and drink wine as fuel for sexual intercourse.
The code is simple. For Bacchus, Ceres, and Venus we should understand
wine, bread, and sex in that order. The god and goddesses in the saying lose all
trace of individuality, and are reduced to a single product of nature or natural
function. We continue to employ code to exclude individuals or groups that we
do not want to understand a message, while including those with whom we
wish to share it.3
Fables and myths (the first term is just the Latin equivalent of the second, which is Greek) break down into different types, as modern students of
mythology and narratology are aware. In the fables of Aesop, animals represent particular human character types. For example, in the fable of the fox
and the crow, the fox represents human cunning, while the crow is a victim
of her own vanity. In the “myths” of Plato different symbols are used to represent the mind and soul and psychic activities. In the Phaedrus the soul is
represented as a chariot driven by a winged charioteer who is trying to control
two winged horses flying in different directions. In the works of the major
poets certain passages can be isolated from the main narrative and treated as
fables. A prime example is Homer’s lascivious tale of the adultery of Ares and
Aphrodite (Od. 8, 266–​366), sung by the bard Demodocus for the entertainment of the guests. The three types mentioned belong to different genres of
literature, and are not identical in their structure. However, they share a common element that is easily perceived. None of them can be understood literally.
The ancient critics, aware of these fabrications, could readily believe that the
earlier writers made up fables and deliberately encoded them.
All of the stories are true once it is determined that they contain coded
messages. Foxes and crows do not talk, and crows do not usually feed on
cheese (nor would a fox dream up a plan to get cheese from a crow), but people
are indeed vain and easily deceived by flattery. The tale could be reset as an
allegory in which the fox is named Cunning, and the crow Vanity. Winged
charioteers do not guide chariots pulled by winged horses, but human souls
do experience inner conflict between higher and lower emotions, and such
conflicts make it difficult to live rationally. The charioteer is Reason, and the
horses are Indignation and Appetite (corresponding to Plato’s division of the
soul in the Republic). Real gods do not commit adultery, but war and sex are
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often found together. Ares is War and Aphrodite is Sex. Once the underlying meanings (the hyponoia) of these stories are revealed (once the codes are
cracked), they cease to be lies. Each of the authors employed allegory, or so
goes the reasoning.
Another type of narrative was available to Greeks. This type involves characters that are personifications of a mental function or moral quality. A prime
example is “Heracles at the Crossroads,” attributed to Prodicus of Ceos, 4 whom
we met earlier as one of several suspected atheists. Prodicus’s story involves
Heracles in his teenage years. The young hero came to a crossroads, where he
met two imposing female figures, one who called herself Happiness (eudaimonia), though her enemies call her Vice (kakia); the other is named Virtue
(aretē). Each delivered a speech to the hero, presenting a path of life available
to him: Happiness tells of easy living and a life full of pleasure; Virtue presents
a life filled with hardships and challenges but rich in intangible rewards. The
two figures engage in a brief debate with each other. Heracles is left with the
choice.
A modern reader might immediately react to this tale by asking, “Where
is the allegory?” What could have a more obvious meaning than a story about
people named Happiness and Virtue? It might take a modicum of wit to figure out that Aesop’s fable of the mouse and the lion is really about people,
but where is the puzzle here? The veil of vice and virtue covering two large
females is very flimsy indeed. Such would also have been a normal reaction from Greeks living in the age of the sophists. They would have noticed
that fables composed by Prodicus and Aesop are different from each other.
Prodicus’s fable requires no interpretation. It interprets itself. The name given
to the characters defines them in such a way as to exclude all other attributes
or activities. Thus, Happiness can only be happy and only do things that are
pleasurable, while Virtue must be virtuous at all times, and only perform virtuous acts. This type of fable is constructed so that one personified character
is paired with another; the pairs can be conceived as oppositional or as complementary. Greek rhetorical theory, coming into adolescence in that age, would
have provided them the name for this process: prosopopoeia, “creating a persona.” This figure was a trick of poets and rhetoricians and would have been
recognized by educated persons for what it was.
All of the above is true, but it is not completely satisfying. One must be
ready to allow that the young hero en route to dispatch a lion or tidy up someone’s stables did not literally encounter two large ladies, one of whom was tarted
up to a T, the other dressed in hand-​me-​downs. The encounter at the crossroads was doubtless meant by its author as an allegory of inner psychological
conflict—​a conflict between the natural urge to satisfy one’s bodily appetites
and the appeal of reason to hold them in check so as to achieve greater things.
The conflict is extended into a division between body and soul when Virtue
says to Happiness, “While thy votaries are young their bodies are weak, when
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they wax old, their souls are without sense.”5 Clearly the sophist Prodicus, a
contemporary of Socrates, is revealing his awareness that body and soul are
different things.6 But the description nonetheless counts as an allegory or
code, for an action is described that could not have occurred, and the reader or
listener must realize for himself that the story refers to a psychological event,
not a real one. A naive mind, or one from an earlier time, might have heard
Prodicus’s tale and believed that Heracles had had a real conversation with two
oversized females blocking his path.
“Heracles at the Crossroads” raises another problem. Happiness (also
called Evil) and Virtue are abstractions, concepts of the mind, unless, of course
one thinks of them as daimones, or spirits. But Heracles was a real person,
or so most Greeks believed. (Even the skeptical Herodotus believed in his
existence, though he doubted that the hero could singlehandedly overcome
a large crowd of Egyptians intent on killing him.) We are left with the odd
mixture of a character who is a “real person” and others who are not. For an
enlightened interpreter, the two unreal characters are names of attributes that
are self-​explanatory. But is Heracles meant to be the actual hero known by
that name, or rather as a symbol for all humans who must make the choice
presented to them? And if the figure is meant to represent Everyman, what
is the significance of the choice of Heracles rather than some other hero?
Whatever the answers, Prodicus’s tale represents one type of the composed
allegory: this consists of a god or great hero in situations in which the other
characters are abstractions, or personifications of one concept or another. The
other type dispenses with personified abstractions, and employs gods only, or
gods and heroes together, but in such a way that each figure is restricted to a
single meaning. An example is the “Judgment of Paris,” which has a cast that
includes a hero (Paris) and three goddesses (Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera),
each serving as a personification of a particular virtue.7 In both types only two
kinds of action can be represented in the narrative: conflict or harmony. The
first can be shown as represented by debate or physical battle, the second by a
love affair or marriage.
We need to push further back to answer the question of how earlier
thinkers devised the theory that Homer and Hesiod were writing fables that
were meant to be read allegorically. We need look no further than Hesiod’s
Theogony for examples. Numerous passages of Hesiod’s masterpiece are rich
in personification. The personified figures embrace natural phenomena such
as air, earth, or sky, or attributes of the soul or mind such as reason, emotions, virtues, and vices. Following the principles for composed allegories, the
tale of the natural pair Earth and Sky that occurs at the beginning is framed
as conflict; at the end of the work, Zeus’s successive marriages to goddesses
are lodged in complementarity. Three of Zeus’s brides are personifications of
mental functions or virtues: Themis (Right or Good Order), Metis (Wisdom),
and Mnemosyne (Memory). These attributes of the soul are required in order to
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ensure that Zeus will reign forever, and “to the end that no other should hold
royal sway over the eternal gods” (Theog. 892–​93). Because Zeus is wedded to
these divine paragons of virtue, the narrative fulfills the principle of complementarity. In the initial allegory in Theogony, the character Earth can only be
the earth, and the character Sky can only be the sky; the story of their violent
separation is apparently a poetic way of saying that earth and sky were at one
time intermingled, and then became separated. There we have an allegory of
physical conflict, showing that allegories can relate to physical as well as psychological phenomena.
Homer, too, engaged in what we would call personifications. In a much
discussed passage in book 9 of the Iliad, the aged horseman Phoenix, who
takes part in the embassy to assuage Achilles and persuade him to rejoin the
battle, includes a fable that includes the personifications Ate (“Ruin”) and the
Litai (“Suppliant Prayers”):
For there are also the spirits of Prayer (Litai), the daughters of great Zeus,
and they are lame of their feet, and wrinkled, and cast their eyes sidelong,
who toil on their way, left far behind by the spirit of Ruin (Ate):
but she, Ruin, is strong and sound on her feet, and therefore
far outruns all Prayers, and wins into every country
to force men astray; and the Prayers follow as healers after her.
If a man venerates these daughters of Zeus as they draw near,
such a man they bring great advantage, and hear his entreaty;
but if a man shall deny them, and stubbornly with a harsh word
refuse, they go to Zeus, son of Kronos, in supplication
that Ruin may overtake this man, that he be hurt, and punished.
Homer concludes with the moral of the tale:
So, Achilleus; grant, you also, that Zeus’ daughters be given
their honour, which lordly though they be, curbs the will of others.8
In terms of structure, the “Ate and Litai fable” is a close parallel to
“Heracles at the Crossroads.” In each fable a god or great hero (Zeus and
Heracles, respectively) is asked to arbitrate between the rival claims of personified mental forces: those of Ruin versus Spirits of Prayer, or Happiness
versus Virtue. A topsy-​t urvy instance is the “Judgment of Paris,” when a mortal (Paris) is asked to arbitrate a beauty contest (Miss Olympus) among three
goddesses (Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena). While we may safely assume that in
the age of the sophists a writer such as Prodicus meant to compose an allegory,
we cannot be sure that the oldest poets, Homer and Hesiod, had any such idea.
It can be argued that they thought of the characters we call “personifications”
as real gods or daimones (though I personally am skeptical). However, for the
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history of interpretation none of this matters. What matters is that interpreters believed that the poets were concealing physical or mental forces with the
name of a god or daimōn. Both poets employed a code of substitution. Not
only were minor daimones such as Ate to be understood as names for a mental
disturbance, but the great gods themselves were made a part of the code. The
gods could represent elements of the cosmos or forces of the mind or soul, as
context demanded. This is the view we encounter in a text generally thought to
be the earliest example of allegorical interpretation; it is a fragment of a work
on Homer by the grammarian Theagenes of Rhegium:
There is an ongoing discussion about the gods with regard to the
discordant, likewise the unseemly, for he [?]‌says that the myths about
the gods are unseemly. With respect to that allegation there are those
who release from exact wording, thinking that everything was said
allegorically and pertain to the natural elements, for example, in the
case of their opposition. For they say that the hot struggles against the
cold, and the light against the heavy. Moreover, water is what puts out
fire, while fire is that which dries up water. Similarly, opposition exists
among all the elements out of which the whole is constituted and
undergoes destruction in part at certain times, but persists forever
as a whole. And he [Homer] sets out various battles, giving fire the
names Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus, water the names Poseidon
and Scamander, the moon Artemis, the air Hera, and so forth. In a
similar way names of the gods are distributed to [mental] conditions,
e.g. Athena to reasoning, Ares to immoderation, Aphrodite to desire,
Hermes to speech, and they [the poets?] ascribe them to these ones.
This mode of defence is very ancient, and [comes] from Theagenes of
Rhegium, who was the first to write about Homer, and this [method]
is away from literal interpretation.9
The information contained in this fragment passed through several
stages of editing. Even before the Homer scholiast excerpted Porphyry, and
Porphyry (fourth century c.e.) excerpted Theagenes, philosophers may have
inserted their own version of what Theagenes said. Moreover, the fragment
leaves important questions unanswered, as we don’t know who is meant to
be the subject of “says” in the first sentence, and in other places it is not clear
who is speaking. But there are, however, a few takeaways: (1) there has been an
accusation (katēgorian) that an unnamed writer spoke inappropriately about
the gods; (2) a group of defenders argued against literal interpretation and
proposed that everything was spoken allegorically; (3) the names of the gods
were given by an unnamed writer to the battling elements and also to some
mental conditions; (4) the defense of allegory was first used by Theagenes of
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Rhegium. It is likely, then, that allegorical interpretation arose out of the need
to defend the ancient poets.
If Theagenes worked in the final quarter of the sixth century b.c.e., as
is generally agreed,10 he could well have been responding to Xenophanes of
Colophon, who, as we will recall, had accused Homer and Hesiod of saying
everything shameful about the gods, accusing them of theft, adultery, and
deceiving one another. The hypothesis gains credibility if we suppose that
Xenophanes was already active in Elia, as his book could easily have reached a
reader in Rhegium (modern Reggio di Calabria).
The discussion of the opposition of the elements just cited brings Heraclitus
back into discussion. Heraclitus had rebuked the author of the line (Homer),
“ ‘Would that strife might be destroyed from among gods and men’: for there
would be no musical scale unless high and low existed, nor living creatures,
without male and female, which are opposites.”11 Strife (eris) was also Heraclitus’s
principle of motion; it stood in opposite to Hesiod’s catalyst for movement,
Attraction (erōs). Strife among the gods (theomachia), portrayed in Hesiod’s
battle of the gods, was later censured by Plato as a tale unworthy of the divine
nature, even though he was aware that it was among the tales that had been
interpreted allegorically. We may imagine that before Plato, and probably even
before Xenophanes, the theomachia had been added to the catalogue of bad stories about the gods. These would include the castration of Ouranos by Kronos,
Kronos swallowing his children (both from Theogony), Zeus suspending Hera
in the sky and hurling Hephaestus from Olympus (Iliad), and the adultery of
Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey). To these “bad stories” was added the unbelievable ones. Chief among these was Odysseus’s description of the doings in the
underworld and the punishments allotted to the Titans who had offended Zeus.
It is possible that there were earlier efforts to interpret the names of the
gods allegorically. It has been argued that Pherecydes the Syrian, born around
600 b.c.e., was an early exponent.12 But I believe we are on more solid ground
with Theagenes, as a treatise on Homer is ascribed to him, and according to
the author of the fragment cited, “he was the first to write about Homer.”13
His work can be dated after the Pisistratan text of Homer and arguably after
Xenophanes’ critique of Homer and Hesiod. Moreover, because the strife
of the gods is a central point in the fragment, we can connect him to the
arguments of Heraclitus, who flourished not much later than Xenophanes.
Between Theagenes and Plato there were others who engaged in allegory of
both the physical and moral type delineated by Theagenes. Among these were
the Cynic philosophers Antisthenes and Diogenes. According to Antisthenes,
Odysseus was a symbol of self-​control, which enabled him to overcome the
spells of Circe. Diogenes allegorized Circe as the embodiment of pleasure.14
The defenders of poetry adhered to the position that Homer and Hesiod,
“the teachers of all of Greece,” could not have erred; certainly they could not
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have deliberately lied. Hence, the poets doubtless had something else in
mind when they related the stories that Plato and others objected to. The job
of the critic was to preserve the authority of the poet and the text by uncovering the text’s true meaning. At the same time, it was intuited that people
who lived earlier held childish views about the origins of the world, the
gods, and the afterlife. The causes of their simple ideas could be explained
by applying rationalist principles. A common modus operandi consisted in
interpreting the name of a monster as a misunderstanding of some natural
phenomenon.
Practically all ancient allegorical criticism assumes that the intention
of the poet can be recovered. It also assumes that the intention contains a
truth that has been obscured by ambiguous language. As we have seen, the
earliest critics of the poets thought of them not only as great teachers (thus
Xenophanes, Herodotus), but also as serious cosmologists (Heraclitus);
thus, it was possible to believe their poems contained deep philosophical and
cosmological truths that only awaited decoding. However, well before the
new discipline of rhetoric introduced the figure of personification—​a kind
of magic wand that could turn a god or daimōn into a figure of speech—​t he
interpreters of myths knew how to decode the anthropomorphic gods of the
poets as little more than symbols of natural phenomena. Xenophanes, who
detested the poets’ anthropomorphic gods, also said that Iris was just a name
for a rainbow, and Helios (“the sun”) was just a ball of burning clouds.
Prodicus, who gave us the fable of “Heracles at the Crossroads,” also theorized that early humankind had given the name of “god” to the things beneficial to human life. He was followed in his opinions by the curious Metrodorus
of Lampsacus, thought to be a student of Anaxagoras.15 Whereas Prodicus’s
interest lay in explaining how humans came to their conception of the gods,
Metrodorus was concerned with interpreting the poets. Several fragments
survive that attest to his physical explanations of Homer.
And with regard to the customs and laws that are relevant to men,
(he said that) Agamemnon is the aether, Achilles the sun, Helen the
earth, and Paris the air, Hector the moon, and the others analogously
named for such things. Of the gods Demeter is the liver, Dionysus the
spleen, Apollo the gall.16
Although the association of divinities with parts of the anatomy is startling, a
partial explanation can be derived from Metrodorous’s statement of principle
in the following:
And Metrodorus of Lampsacus in his work on Homer discoursed,
quite cheerfully reducing everything to allegory. For Zeus and Hera
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and Athena are not what those who dedicate precincts and sanctuaries
think, but are natural phenomena and arrangements of the elements.
And you can say that all Hector and Achilles and Agamemnon and
all the Greeks in general as well as the barbarians, together with
Helen and Paris, all being of the same nature, were introduced for the
sake of (literary) management, as none of the people just mentioned
existed.17
Metrodorus, like Theagenes, made his remarks in a (lost) treatise on
Homer. He taught that Homer disguised the gods as something else and
invented fictitious humans—​all for the sake of art. It is useful to remember
that the anthropomorphic gods were latecomers to the scene. However, these
gods—​even as represented by the poets—​never lost their association with the
physical attributes with which they were associated. Zeus was forever connected to lightning (the Thunderbolt) and the weather; Poseidon was intimately
bound up with the sea and water; Hades was the underworld and not much
else; and Helios was always just the sun. Even when these gods developed
human-​like characteristics and stories expanding their personalities grew up
around them, they retained a large portion of their original identities. Their
natural aspects were preserved in their cults, and humans worshipped them
because they provided all the benefits of nature (as Prodicus maintained).
From there it is an easy step to reduce the gods to these associations, and
to see them merely as metaphors for natural phenomena. If that is the case,
then Metrodorus took a big step in the direction of atheism, breaking his ties
with Ionian thinkers such as Anaximenes and Heraclitus, who, I think, genuinely believed their respective archai air and fire to be divine, endowed with
the power of thought and the ability to initiate change and motion. As long as
the gods retained “mind” they could be persons in some respect; this identity
as persons ceased when they were metamorphosed into elements. In the leap
from the Ionian archai to Metrodorus’s empty elements we can see the nexus
between cosmology and literary criticism, between alterations of a paradigm
and modes of interpretation.
Doubtless the intellectuals who attempted to interpret the poets were
aware of how the gods were received in popular cult. Recall, moreover, that
the earliest attacks on the Homeric gods were related, not to their nature
aspects, but to the human traits ascribed to them. These human traits consisted not only of their bodily characteristics but, more importantly their
moral traits as well. Such indeed was the gist of Xenophanes’ and Plato’s
attacks on Homer and Hesiod. Metrodorus pointedly makes use of this critique when he claims that the gods have been misrepresented. This is his
message: the gods should be reduced to their nature associations, and all
of the anthropomorphic trappings should be stripped away. Homer added
them just to make a good story.
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As already noted, Plato himself composed new “myths” to illustrate his
philosophical doctrines. The noetic world is illustrated by the analogy of the
charioteer and horses and the creation by the story told by Timaeus.18 If the
greatest philosopher of antiquity—​or so Plato was regarded—​could adumbrate his deep doctrines with myths, why should the greatest sages before
him (so runs the ancient logic) not have done the same? For the ancient
interpreter, the bond of meaning between what was signified and how it
was interpreted had to be unbreakable; otherwise, all attempts to find meaning in a text would be in vain. For those who believed that the poets were the
authors of myths, poetry was the equivalent of myth, and myth the equivalent of allegory. Thus, for ancient exegetes it was theoretically possible to
read entire poems allegorically, and so to decode them. Modern theory,
however, does not assume that allegoresis is a legitimate mode of interpretation for every story, but only those narratives that structurally show the
components of a composed allegory (such as “Heracles at the Crossroads,”
or Homer’s tale of the Litai). Certainly, whole works should not be read as
allegories. Most ancient critics, in practice, did not attempt to do that, and
in most cases restricted interpretations to saving the appearances of passages in Homer and Hesiod that were criticized as immoral or unworthy of
belief. In the final analysis, there can be little doubt that allegory as a mode
of interpretation was born of a deeply felt need to defend the reputations of
the founding poets—​even to defend poetry itself.
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7
Finding History in Myth
Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to
the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of
exact history.1
With these words Plutarch begins his “Life of Theseus” in his great work, Lives
of the Noble Greeks and Romans, or Parallel Lives. Plutarch (46–​post 120 c.e.)
was a talented essayist who turned his hand to numerous subjects, including
philosophy, religion, and myth. However, his lasting fame is due to the Lives.
There he pairs Theseus with Romulus, the respective founders of Athens and
Rome. In doing this he recognizes that he is stepping beyond verifiable history into the realm of fable. Plutarch is fully cognizant of the risks facing him.
He likens the venture to the work of geographers who “crowd into the edges
of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes
in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but Scythian ice and
frozen seas … prodigies and fictions.”2 Undeterred by either “Scythian ice or
frozen seas,” Plutarch plunges into the cold murky waters of fable with the
hope of reducing it to probable fact.
It is one thing to collect what has been said about mythical figures who lived
before the age of written documents. The Greeks were experts at this: mythography, the gathering of myths and genealogies, had been a respectable profession for centuries. However, it is quite another to make a selection of stories
told about a particular hero and weave them together into anything like a credible biography. Now Plutarch had a great advantage, or so he thought. In his
day there existed a number of accounts of Theseus thought to be reliable, as
they were attached to authoritative names. Plutarch cites Demon, Philochorus,
Paeon the Amathusian, and Dicaearchus, who are virtually unknown even
to classical scholars, and the more familiar Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and
Herodorus (though these names, too, would be “Greek” to all but the initiated). Sometimes he cites his sources to show that there was a consensus, as he
does when he wanted to prove that Theseus made a voyage to the Amazons and
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took one (Antiope) a prisoner. At other times, he cites a disagreement between
the older accounts, and ventures to choose the more plausible story.3 In one
instance Philochorus is judged more reliable than Demon, when he claims
that Theseus bested Taurus, Minos’s general, in physical combat of some sort
(wrestling?) rather than killing him, as Demon claimed.
Plutarch’s treatment of the combat incident just cited requires both context and analysis. The biographer is relying on sources of which the oldest,
Pherecydes of Athens, flourished in the fifth century b.c.e. 4 However, we
have no idea quite how many centuries fell between this scholarly figure
and Theseus, if Theseus existed at all. If he did exist, he has to be placed
before the Trojan War, ca. 1200 b.c.e. One has to wonder what the source was
of Pherecydes’ information, and what kind of information it was. We seem
to be faced with a long succession of “authorities,” including Demon and
Philochorus, who copied from one source or several, changing this or that
detail as they saw fit. It would seem that everyone before Plutarch was skating
on thin Scythian ice.5
But there is more to unpack than discrepancies in Plutarch’s sources. The
account accepted by Plutarch of Theseus, Minos, and Taurus is a breathtaking bowdlerization of the traditional story: Minos, King of Crete, on account
of an offense against him by the Athenians, demanded a yearly tribute of so
many youths and maidens. These were shipped off to Crete, imprisoned in a
labyrinth constructed by Daedalus, and devoured by the Minotaur, a monster
held to have a human body and a bull’s head. Theseus, the son of Aegeus, king
of Athens, volunteered to slay the Minotaur and rescue the surviving youths
and maidens. On arrival in Crete he befriends Ariadne, daughter of Minos,
who plants a string in the labyrinth for Theseus to follow so that he can find
and dispatch the Minotaur. All goes as planned, including the slaying of the
Minotaur. Theseus frees the youths and maidens and sails back to Athens with
the tributary youths and maidens along with Ariadne, whom he has abducted.
Before reaching home he dumps Ariadne on the Isle of Naxos. He nears the
port in Athens, but having forgotten to hang out the white sail agreed upon,
must suffer the death of his father, who saw a black sail instead and died.
There is an intriguing piece of the story omitted in the synopsis above.
Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos, conceived a passion for a bull (tauros in Greek).
She enticed the artisan Daedalus to construct a figure of a cow in wood,
which she entered in order to have intercourse with the bull. The coupling
was successful, and the Minotaur resulted. If we examine Plutarch’s account
of the entire saga, which he has pieced together from Philochorus, Damon,
and perhaps others, we note the following: the Minotaur has entirely disappeared. The bull that impregnated Pasiphaë has become Minos’s general named Taurus, a fellow of nasty disposition and a skirt chaser (“he
was accused of too near familiarity with Pasiphae,” thus Plutarch), but not
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an ogre. Theseus overpowers Taurus in a contest, but does not kill him.
Ariadne falls madly in love with Theseus and goes with him willingly.
Minos voluntarily relinquishes the tributary youths, being pleased at the
humiliation of Taurus. Plutarch has magically transformed a tale of bestiality, cannibalism, bloodshed, and rape into a cartoon suitable for viewing by
children twelve and under. His hero whips the bad guy’s hind parts, saves
the world, and gets the girl.
The processes employed here of making a tale that is both incredible and
immoral into an account that might be believed, and is also morally acceptable, may strike us today as a silly exercise for anyone who does not work for
Disney. However, if the intention is to turn a myth into a believable biography,
then the processes gain some justification. First of all, minotaurs do not exist
now. Plutarch did not believe in their existence, since neither he nor any of his
friends had seen one nor knew anyone who had. If that is so, they probably
never existed, for there is no reason to believe that the past was qualitatively
different from the present.6 Minotaurs are a fiction, but that a man can be
called Taurus is a fact. Moreover, if there is no monster in the labyrinth, then
the youths and maidens were not eaten. Next, women as a rule don’t have
intercourse with bulls, even inside the protective cover of a wooden cow. Fear
of pain or physical damage would suppress the most powerful lust in almost
every case. And even if the sex could be managed, it would not produce a
hybrid monster.
Whereas some ancient historians and collectors of myths took it for
granted that mythical monsters existed, philosophers are not so easily satisfied. They would want to know if it was at all possible for hybrid creatures
to come into being. Lucretius, though aware that nature produced its share
of aberrations, set out to prove that nature could not make something out
of unrelated parts:
But there were no Centaurs, nor could at any time
creatures of two double natures and two bodies,
be built out of unrelated parts and substance on both sides;
and here is the proof for even the dull of mind.
First: at about three years, the horse has reached
its prime; not so the child: for often still
In sleep he’ll seek his mother’s milky breasts.
Later, when horses are aging, and their strength
and muscle are failing, as life runs toward its close,
then, for the boy, the bloom of youth is just
beginning, just starting to clothe his cheeks with down.
Don’t then imagine that from the seed of man
and horse, Centaurs could be confected and exist… . 7
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Lucretius leaves his readers to conclude that, even if centaurs existed, no
one would want to be one. Elsewhere (4, 722–​47), he explains how images of
hybrid creatures such as centaurs and scyllas are formed by the human mind.
Plutarch, who was widely read in the philosophical literature, may well have
known the Lucretian passages. However, it was not necessary to invoke a philosopher’s authority when he edited the minotaur out of his script. He could
simply draw on a long Greek tradition of regarding such fantastic beings as
ridiculous.
Plutarch deals with another myth attached to Theseus in much the same
way. He relates how he journeys with his close friend Pirithoüs to Epirus in
order to abduct Cora, the daughter of King Aidoneus and his wife Persephone.
The royal couple keep a large dog named Cerberus with whom potential suitors of their daughter must fight to gain her hand. This account is transparently a bowdlerization of the myth in which Theseus and Pirithoüs descend to
the underworld (Hades) to abduct Persephone, also called Cora, or Kore. (The
story, incidentally, is a riff on the tale of Heracles’ descent to Hades to steal
Cerberus and bring it back to King Eurystheus). Plutarch doesn’t believe in
the underworld or three-​headed guard dogs, so he sets the story in a remote,
but recognizable part of Greece (Epirus) on the surface of the earth, turns
Hades, god of the underworld, into Aidoneus, an earthly king, and neglects to
tell us how many heads the dog has. He also separates the traditional figure
of Persephone (also called Kore) into mother and daughter, Persephone and
Kore. Even though this is a myth of an abduction, I suspect that Plutarch the
moralist may have wished to avoid inserting the additional crime of adultery
into his account.
Plutarch’s aim is to purify myth with reason. Once incredible or rebarbative details have been removed from a story, or explained as something
else, a fable can be turned into history. The process is based on the premise that what is impossible today was always impossible. There never was
a time when things were qualitatively different from what they are today.
Humans may have been a little bigger in the past, but there were no giants.
If perverse humans mate with animals today, they do not produce hybrid
monsters. This means that there were never any minotaurs, centaurs, satyrs,
or three-​headed dogs. Moreover, there is no such thing as the underworld,
where dead souls continue to exist in some state, and if there is, you can’t
get there from here. Plutarch, on the other hand, was willing to put his faith
in Amazons, who might threaten males but not credulity. They are, after all,
human women. Like other women, they need males to impregnate them
and provide them with offspring, even if they get rid of the males and rear
the females. They live in remote places around the Black Sea, but then the
Greeks already had planted some colonies there. Hate them and dread them
if you like, but there is no reason to think they did not exist somewhere in
Scythia.8
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I have spent some time on Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus” because it neatly
exemplifies what had long been the practices of Greek writers attempting
to capture an unreachable past—​a past disconnected by centuries of illiteracy. If we place Homer in the eighth century b.c.e., we must accept the
conclusion that five centuries intervened between the traditional date of
the war and the oral composition of the Iliad. We must then believe that
the preceding oral poets were capable of preserving details of the battles
along with the names of the Greek heroes and their Trojan enemies in some
semblance of a stable form for five centuries. We must allow additional time
before Homer’s poem was written down before the work of writing “history” could begin.
For the Greeks of the sixth century b.c.e., Homer provided the earliest
account of people who spoke Greek, had recognizable Greek names, and
could claim Greek descent through their genealogy. This presented a serious
dilemma when the attacks on the poet and his poems began.
Homer was all one had to cling to. Throw him out, and the baby goes out
with the bathwater. The dilemma was even more serious when dealing with
matter considered to predate the Trojan War, for which there were no sources
that could be traced back even as far as Homer. What we know of the labors of
Heracles, the career of Theseus, and the adventures of Jason are all dependent
on written sources no older than ca. 500.
The process of ordering, classifying, and rationalizing the earliest figures
of Greek myth began in the fifth century with figures such as Hecataeus of
Miletus, Pherecydes the Athenian, Herodorus, and Hellanicus. However,
we detect in these very early mythographers the same confidence in the ability to purify myth as we find in Plutarch five centuries later. A fragment of
Hecataeus tells us the following:
Hecataeus of Miletus speaks thus: “I record these matters in a way that
seems to me to be true. For the fables of the Greeks are as numerous
as they are laughable, as it seems to me.”9
We learn this from another fragment:
On the peak of Tainarus there is a temple that can be likened to
a cave and before it a statue of Poesidon. Certain of the Greeks
fabricated the story how Heracles brought up the hound of Hades
to that place. Hecataeus of Miletus was not prepared to believe
there was a path in a cave under the earth, nor was he persuaded
there was an underground dwelling for the gods where shades are
gathered. However, he discovered a likely explanation for the fable.
A frightful snake was raised on Tainarus that was called “the hound
of Hades” because anyone bitten by it died immediately from the
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poison. And he stated that this same snake was brought by Heracles
to Eurystheus.10
Neither Hecataeus nor Plutarch believed that there was a ferocious dog living
underground to guard the dwelling of gods. Plutarch “solved” the problem
of the “Theseus in the Underworld” episode by setting the story in a Greek
kingdom on earth. Hecataeus used another device, asserting that the “hound
of Hades” (Cerberus) was merely a name for a deadly snake. Neither Plutarch
nor Hecataeus believed in the existence of Hades (the place). However, neither of them doubted the existence of Heracles (Plutarch frequently compares
Theseus to him), or any of his exploits, provided that they could be explained
as natural happenings. It is humanly possible for someone with sufficient
courage to hunt down and kill a poisonous snake. Even the idea of having
to perform a series of dangerous exploits for a cruel king is believable. But if
one will purify a myth with reason, one must remove every trace of the supernatural and of divine interference with mortals. It is all right to depict mortals
worshipping the gods, as religion is natural to humans. Just don’t let the gods
do anything.
As noted above, Hecataeus unravels the myth of the underworld with the
explanation that “hound of Hades” was merely a name given to a baneful serpent. The idea of explaining away a prodigy as nothing more than a name had
a long history. It was familiar to Plutarch, who uses it to explain an episode in
the life of Theseus. One of the savage beasts alleged to be killed by Theseus
was “the Crommyonian sow, which they called Phaea, a savage and formidable
wild beast, by no means an enemy to be despised.”11 For some reason Plutarch
did not believe the account to be entirely credible, or sufficiently impressive, so
he appended another version of the tale:
Others related that Phaea was a woman, a robber full of cruelty and
lust, that lived in Crommyon, and had the name of Sow given her
from the foulness of her life and manners.12
Here we have the sleight of hand that is the gift of etymology. Phaea means
“dusky” in Greek. The lady in question was known for her sooty appearance,
so her neighbors dubbed her “the Sow.” In the end, Theseus did not kill a big
pig, but dispatched a woman who was accused of robbery and a messy life.
Techniques of this type were later to be a boon to the Fathers of the
Church, whose motivation to deconstruct pagan myths surpassed the pagans’
search for mere rationality. A much more important objective was to destroy
paganism in all its forms and supplant it with Christian beliefs. Accordingly,
the topos that such-​and-​such has no reality, but is just a name for something
else, was appealing to ecclesiastics engaged in polemic against pagan poetry.
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Three centuries after Plutarch, St. Augustine used the same device to explain
away the myth that the Muses were the daughters of Jupiter (Zeus). Ignoring
the obvious fact that the word “music” is derived from “Muse,” not the other
way around, he asserted that the Muses were portrayed by triple statues
because the sound of music is produced by three instruments: the voice, horns
or flutes, and percussion instruments. On that account the Muses were given
their name.13 Make of it what you will.
The techniques whereby a critic can discredit some parts of myths and
reduce others to credible history have often been ascribed to Euhemerus,
third-​century b.c.e. author of a voyage tale entitled Sacred Scripture. The author
claims that he sailed to an island in the Indian Ocean, where he saw a column
in a temple dedicated to Zeus, on which the names of the gods and their deeds
were inscribed. He learned that the gods had once been great kings and heroes
who were worshipped after their death:
There is no doubt that those who are worshipped as gods were first
human beings; this was the case for the first and the greatest of kings;
but this was also the case for those whose courage had served the
human species, and who, once they were dead, were given divine
honors… .14
Although Euhemerus himself is not known for any applications of this idea,
he is credited as the source of the types of reductionism and naturalizing of
myths we have been discussing. Whereas the phrase “to euhemerize a tale”
has stuck and is a useful shortcut for describing the refashioning of a story in
a naturalistic way, the process of interpreting myths euhemeristically began
earlier. We have already seen it in Hecataeus.
The view that the gods and stories about them were human inventions
created to serve a variety of social needs had a long history in Greece. From
at least the fifth century the Greeks were interested in the beginnings of civilization and its evolution from a primitive state. Not unlike our nineteenth-​
and twentieth-​century anthropologists, they theorized about the state of the
“primitive mind” and its thought processes. They raised questions as to how
earlier peoples conceived of the gods and other supernatural beings. We have
already encountered the theory of Prodicus of Ceos as to how humans gave the
name of god to all the things that benefited human life. Critias, or whichever
poet composed the satyr play Sisyphus, was an early “conspiracy theorist”: the
gods were invented by politicians who endeavored to control human behavior
through fear. For the atomist Democritus, human beings were terrified by
natural phenomena, and so they venerated all that happened in the sky by the
name of Zeus. Euhemerus, with his idea that gods were originally exceptional
human beings who were deified after their death, was part and parcel of this
tradition. Somewhat later the universal historian Diodorus of Sicily put his
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seal on the usefulness of piety for social harmony, a theme that other writers such as the historian Polybius had explored. Especially intriguing is the
“anthropological” theory of the geographer Strabo, who compared the credulous minds of uneducated people to those of children:
Now every illiterate and uneducated man is, in a sense, a child, and
like a child, he is fond of stories; and for that matter, so is the half-​
educated man, for his reasoning faculty has not been fully developed,
and, besides, the mental habits of his childhood persist in him.15
Strabo did not accuse the poets of inventing the myths; rather, they came originally from the lawgivers, who possessed “an insight into the emotional nature
of the reasoning animal.” 16
Long before Strabo, or even Euhemerus, Herodotus contrasted the
Greek belief that men could be descended from a god to the teachings of the
Egyptians. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, aptly called “the father of history,”
lived from roughly 480 to 425 b.c.e. He ranks with Thucydides as one of the
two greatest Greek historians. He traveled as far as Scythia (roughly equivalent to modern Ukraine) and reported the beliefs and ways of thought of the
peoples he visited. These can be read in his great work, the Histories, which
has survived intact. He credits the Egyptians with ideas that will remind us of
Euhemerus. In refuting Hecataeus for asserting that he could trace his genealogy to a god sixteen generations back, Herodotus invokes the authority of the
Egyptian priests whom he visited in Egypt:
When Hecataeus traced his genealogy and connected himself with a
god sixteen generations back, the priests refused to believe him, and
denied that any man had ever had a divine ancestor. They countered
his claim by tracing the descent of their own high priests, pointing out
that each of the statues represented a “piromis” (a word which means
something like “gentleman”) who was the son of another “piromis,”
and made no attempt to connect them with either a god or demigod.
Such, then, were the beings represented by the statues; they were far
from being gods—​they were men.17
As already noted, Herodotus relied on his knowledge of Egyptian customs
derived from the priests to debunk the tale of the sacrifice of Heracles at the
hands of Egyptians. According to the priests, the Egyptians did not practice or
allow human sacrifice. The rest of the story asserting that Heracles broke free
and killed all his captors was obviously false for the simple reason that a mere
human could not do this single handedly. Herodotus can also be credited with
drawing a line dividing the chronology of history and myth. He, too, took up
the Theseus saga with the following:
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“Polycrates was the first Greek we know of to plan the dominion of
the sea, unless we count Minos of Cnossus and any other who may
possibly have ruled the sea at a still earlier date. In ordinary human
history [emphasis added], at any rate, Polycrates was the first.18
Polycrates belongs to human history, Minos to the time of myth. Not only was
Minos involved in the business with Pasiphaë, a wooden cow, and a minotaur
(a story as tawdry as it is incredible), he was also accorded a role as a judge in
the underworld after his death. History has no place for hybrid beings such as
minotaurs or frightening tales of life after death. The most discredited story
in all antiquity (excepting, perhaps, the doings of Kronos) involved Odysseus’s
experiences at the edge of Hades (Od., book 11). If there is an afterlife—​itself a
debatable proposition among Greek intellectuals—​it does not take place under
the ground. We have seen how Hecataeus reacted to the story of Herakles’
venture into the realm of the dead. But the intellectuals had their hands full.
As soon as they managed to swat down one “descent” tale, another one would
pop up. Not only did Heracles and Theseus essay a visit to Hades, but also
Orpheus, who went there looking for his wife. As late as the first century b.c.e.
the Roman poet Lucretius was still railing at such bogies.19 The scorn with
which “descent into Hades” stories was greeted by intellectuals of all stripes
may explain why the Roman poet Vergil had to dress his own version of it as a
philosophical revelation.20
The ancient Greeks were happy to disbelieve many things. They prided
themselves in discerning fact from fiction. Xenophanes called Homer’s tales
plasmata. Hecataeus thought that Greek stories as a rule were ridiculous,
but he in turn was rebuked by Herodotus for believing that a human could
descend from a god. Just as there was no road to the underworld for mortals,
there was no way back into mythical time. No matter how many generations
your family went back, your ur-​ancestor was still a man, not a god. The past
was never different from the present in terms of what was possible.
Since most Greeks who claimed to be historians were very skeptical about
the events connected to the great heroes, to say nothing of the gods, one must
wonder what sorts of evidence persuaded them that an alleged occurrence
was true. Perhaps our best guide is Pausanias, a second-​century c.e. author
of a travel guide to the regions of Greece. Pausanias took great interest in religious beliefs and legends, and frequently paused to test the veracity of the
latter. He was convinced that there was a skirmish between Amazons and
Theseus in Athens. Antiope, one of the Amazon queens, had fallen in love
with Theseus, and came to his aid in the battle. For her pains she was shot by
another Amazon, Molpadia, whom Theseus slew. Pausanias had no trouble
swallowing the whole story, even though his sources gave different versions.
As noted above, Plutarch also did not question stories about Amazons, if only
because Amazons were described as human women. Pausanias did not doubt
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their existence, either, and believed that there was a battle with the Amazons
because he had seen two monuments erected in their honor: one to Antiope,
the other to Molpadia. After all, as the logic runs, who would go to the trouble
and expense of erecting monuments to persons who did not exist?21
In a similar vein we learn from Pausanias that Theseus was a king of
Athens who brought democracy to the polis and bestowed sovereignty upon
the people, and that his descendants remained rulers to the fourth generation. In the same passage he repeats the old refrain that “there are many
false beliefs among the masses of mankind, since they are ignorant of historical science and consider trustworthy whatever they hear from childhood
in choruses and tragedies.”22 He then mentions that one of these false stories
was about Theseus. What Pausanias probably had in mind was the expedition to Crete and the incidents with Minos, the Minotaur, the labyrinth, and
Ariadne—​none of which was believable. However, the report that Theseus
was a king and brought equality to his people was believable. We can accept
this as true because in Athens there is “a portico built behind with pictures of gods called the Twelve. On the wall opposite are placed Theseus,
Democracy, and Demos (“the people”).23 The wall painting was proof enough
for Pausanias.
Facts did not seem to trouble Pausanias excessively. He was quite willing
to believe that the democracy created by Theseus lasted down to the time of
the tyrant Pisistratus in the sixth century b.c.e. Yet all of the legends about
Theseus make him a near contemporary of Heracles and thus set him before
the Trojan War. He was the son of Aegeus—​a parentage that at least is more
believable than the rumor that he was the child of Poseidon. The mention of
Aegeus connects him to the timeframe of Jason (he of the Golden Fleece) and
Medea, since Medea is supposed to have found refuge with Aegeus after she
slew her children. How, then, do we calculate a mere four generations between
Theseus and the reign of Pisistratus (560–​527 b.c.e.)?
Pausanias was even more credulous when it came to accepting portable
objects as evidence of an event. It is one thing to place one’s faith in monuments and wall paintings with inscriptions. At the least these are indications of community belief that an event occurred in a particular place. It is
quite another matter to believe in portable objects as tokens of a historical
truth. Pausanias gives the following account of King Midas (the king with the
“golden touch”):
Now this people [the Galls] occupied the country on the farther side of
the river Sangarius, capturing Ancyra, a city of the Phrygians, which
Midas son of Gordius founded in a former time. And the anchor,
which Midas found, was even as late as my time in the sanctuary of
Zeus, as well as a spring called the Spring of Midas, water from which
they say Midas mixed with wine to capture Silenus.24
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Pausanias appears to accept the first part of the account without comment.
The second part, involving the capture of Silenus (a satyr-​like woodland spirit),
is tagged with a skeptical “they say.” This part can be quickly discounted
because it presents a mythical character. Now, of course, the spring was real,
as Pausanias had seen it with his own eyes (and who can doubt the existence of
springs?). Only the attempted capture of Silenus is to be discounted, because
sileni do not exist. In the first part there appears to be a connection between
a city called Ancyra (now Ankara in Turkey), which Midas is said to have
founded and an anchor that Midas found. There is a wordplay here, which
the translator accommodates with a play on “found” and “founded.” But the
wordplay in Greek is between Ancyra, the name of a city, and ancyra, “anchor.”
Behind this there must lurk an etymology such as “Ancyra got its name from
an anchor found on the site.” (Never mind that Ankara is a long way from the
sea.) Since Ancyra/​Ankara was founded by Midas, it must have been Midas
who found the anchor. Pausanias could think of no reasons to doubt that the
anchor exhibited in the sanctuary of Zeus was identical to the anchor discovered by Midas on the site of Ancyra. And so, in circular fashion, the continued
existence of the anchor gives proof that Midas founded the city that is named
after an anchor.
We began our chapter with the legend of Theseus, and we return to him to
learn what happened to his famous ship. Plutarch believed in portable objects
as proofs of fact as much as Pausanias did, and he tells the following story:
The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned has
thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the
time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as
they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places,
insomuch that the ship became a standing example among the
philosophers for the logical question of things that grow; one side
holding that the ship remained the same, and other contending that
it was not the same.25
Demetrius Phalereus was a politician and writer who governed Athens for ten
years in the late fourth century. After being forced to flee, he had a soft landing
in Alexandria, where he became head librarian. His writings include histories
and collections of fables, so it is a manageable assumption that he was the
source of the information that Theseus’s ship was still exhibited in Athens
in his time there. But even if all of the planks of Theseus’s ship had been
replaced by Demetrius’s time (Plutarch does not tell us that), and philosophers
debated the question of its identity with the original, we must still believe
that the Athenians had preserved the original ship from the time it touched
the shores of the Piraeus down to Demetrius’s day. The ship remains a proof
of Theseus’s great adventure, whether it is to be set before the Trojan War, or
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about a century before Pisistratus. In the former case, it is likely that all the
planks had to be replaced.
From the sixth century b.c.e. to the end of antiquity in the sixth century
c.e., people, with few exceptions, believed that the great heroes existed and
did many of the exploits attributed to them, provided one understands their
stories in a naturalistic way. Heracles existed and could slay terrible beasts
in single combat, but he could not kill a horde of men who were attempting to sacrifice him. As for the beasts, they had to be real animals that
everyone knew existed, not hybrid creatures such as minotaurs or centaurs.
Dogs could be huge and terrifying, but they could not have three heads or
a hundred eyes. The gods of Homer and Hesiod as well as their abodes on
Olympus, or in the sea or under the earth, belonged to fable. Mountains,
seas, and underground caves all existed, but the gods did not live there. They
did not change their shape, or rescue favorites from a battle, or bring false
dreams to captains. All such stories were plasmata—​fictions. But fictions
can be purified by reason. Remove all the parts that cannot be explained
in a natural way, and reduce the doubtful cases to stories that are plausible.
Theseus set out to visit King Aidoneus in Epirus in Greece. He did not go
underground to visit Hades, the king of the underworld. Aidoneus’s dog did
not have three heads.
The application of these principles to the interpretation of Homer and
Hesiod should be obvious. Most of the stories in Hesiod were put down as
fable, but a great deal of Homer could be salvaged and treated as a true chronicle of the past. The Achaeans and their allies assembled their ships at Aulis
and mounted an expedition against Troy more or less exactly as Homer said.
Book 2 of the Iliad contains the famous “Catalogue of the Ships”: a detailed
inventory of the Greek peoples assembled (named by city or island), the names
of their captains, and the number of ships contributed to the expedition. We
learn, for example, that the ships from Rhodes were captained by Tlepolemos,
son of none other than Heracles (Il. 2, 653). What information could be more
helpful to people who wondered when Heracles lived? He must have died just
before the Trojan War, or he would have joined the foray himself along with his
son—​or so it could be believed. Homer elsewhere is solicitous of his readers in
pinpointing chronology. In Homer’s (in)famous description of existence in the
underworld, we learn that Oedipus’s mother, Jocasta (there named Epicaste),
had already checked into Hades, but Oedipus was still alive and on his throne
(Od. 11, 271–​79).
Homer was viewed as an authoritative source for geography as well. The
geographer Strabo, whom we met just above, was convinced of Homer’s reliability on the subject, and believed him to be more accurate in his localization
of places than Hesiod. Strabo engaged in an extensive and, to moderns, rather
silly debate with Eratosthenes, an Alexandrian polymath from an earlier day,
who championed Hesiod. Strabo admitted that Homer may have got some
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details wrong, but what he wrote about the wanderings of Odysseus was, on
the whole, accurate:
For apart from what I have said concerning the type of myth which
it was proper for Homer to employ, most of the writers who discuss
the same topics that Homer discusses, and also most of the local
traditions, can teach us that these matters are not fictions of poets,
nor yet of prose writers, but are traces of real persons and events.26
He goes on to say that Homer, of course, added “mythical elements to actual
occurrences” … “but to hang an empty story of marvels on something wholly
untrue is not Homer’s way of doing things.” Strabo fleshes out his argument
with a bit of detail. Readers today who are familiar with the stories of the
Cyclops and the Laestrygonians will write them off as entertaining myths,
nothing more. But Strabo was determined to prove that the stories contained
a kernel of historical truth:
Accordingly, he took the foundations of his stories from history. For
instance, history says that Aeolus was once king over the islands about
Lipara, and that the Cyclopes and the Laestragonians, inhospitable
peoples, were lords over the region about Aetna and Leontine; and for
this reason the region about the Strait might not be visited by men of
that time, and that Charybdis and the Rock of Scylla were infested by
brigands.27
Strabo did not think it necessary to reveal the sources from which he derived
his “history.” Rather, he passed on his information as though it has been authorized by a consensus of writers, whom it was unnecessary to identify. He did
not expect to be challenged.28 With a single stroke he managed to eliminate
four classes of monster—​Cyclopes, Laestragonians, Scylla, and Charybdis—​
and replace them with inhospitable peoples and ordinary brigands. The tactics employed by Plutarch to turn a mythical bull into a nasty fellow named
Taurus, and a many-​headed hound named Cerberus into an ordinary guard
dog were already known to Strabo, who a century earlier transformed Homer’s
monsters into just plain nasty folks. Homer’s poetry was based on history, and
included philosophy as well, but these difficult subjects were made palatable
by the inclusion of entertaining stories. As the educator of the Greeks, Homer
had the job of engaging everyone, including the young and women (!).
If Strabo were asked if he could identify the location of the Isles of the
Blest, I am certain that he would give a categorical “no!” for an answer, and
assert that they never existed. Strabo explicitly denies “the whole of theology,”
by which he excludes more than mythical monsters. He discounts Odysseus’s
romps with goddesses, metamorphoses (gods in various guises), divinely
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owned cattle herds (the cattle of the Sun), and the underworld (1.2.11)—​in
other words, everything that is supernatural or derived from an anthropomorphic depiction of the gods. Human survival post mortem belongs to the
supernatural—​
that conviction would exclude Homer’s story of Hades, in
which dimly conscious ghosts flit about in idleness. It would more than likely
also exclude the Isles of the Blest, where, according to Hesiod (Works 167–​
74), Zeus granted a blessed life to certain heroes who fought great wars, and
according to Homer (Od. 4, 590–​99) will be the happy abode of Helen and
Menelaus, the son-​in-​law of Zeus. Homer in the same passage identifies the
Isles with the Elysian Fields. But for crusty old Strabo, who had more than a
drop of atheism in him, both Hades and the Isles of the Blest are poppycock.
They are nothing more than old wives’ tales, Hades being a convenient bogeyman for lawgivers to use to frighten wrongdoers, the Isles of the Blest a will-​
o’-​the-​wisp to inspire virtue:
Now since the portentous [i.e. the supernatural] is not only pleasing,
but fear-​inspiring as well, we can employ both kinds of myth for
children, and for grown-​up people too.
In the case of children we employ the pleasing myths to spur them
on, and the fear-​inspiring myths to deter them, for instance, … the
Gorgon.29
Feel free to disregard all such stories, as long as you believe that Odysseus slew
the suitors “precisely as described by the poet.”30
Modern readers of ancient critics of myth will find much with which to
agree, but much else to raise a smile of condescension. One admires their
skepticism, but all too often the ancients were not skeptical enough. They
too easily accepted the existence of a monument or some physical object like
an old boat or an anchor as proof that an ancient event occurred. They never
seem to have raised the question of whether physical evidence was genuine
or a forgery, or if it might have been tampered with. (They had much keener
noses for forged writings.) They also tended to accept an old story as true
from the mere fact that it did not relate any supernatural events or interferences from the gods, as if presence or absence of those factors were enough
to guarantee truth. In other cases, they disbelieved too much. In the fifth
century c.e., St. Augustine made a list of monstrous creatures and mythical
races in which he included pygmies, doubtless because he had never seen
one.31 Much of this is understandable: the ancients lacked the easy access to
verification of phenomena and events that we all enjoy today. There was no
Internet or television, and travel was arduous and dangerous. Still, for all
their faults, the rationalist critics of myth, who sought to salvage what they
took for history and discard the rest as superstition, deserve a great deal of
credit for their part in liberating humanity from the tyranny of the letter.
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8
Theos—​Rediscovering God
Readers of the last chapter can hardly be blamed for thinking that nothing
ever changed in the inventory of interpretative tools available to the Greeks.
Great philosophical schools could come and go, gods could be dethroned and
new ones established, but the critics bent on making history out of Homer
continued to think in the same way, and employ the same strategies. Even
the gap of nearly a thousand years between the pagan Hecataeus and the
Christian Augustine did not leave any noticeable landmarks. One just keeps
the humanly believable and discards the rest, or reduces its scale. But the view
that nothing changed would be deceptive. It applies strictly to the critics who
wanted to turn myth into history. It does not apply to the allegorists affected
by the vagaries of philosophical trends. As we shall see in the next chapter,
there were major developments in exegesis that grew out of a seismic shift in
the prevailing paradigm.
With the work of the atomists at the end of the fifth century the paradigm of physis was complete. Thales’ dictum that “all things are full of
gods” had been gradually replaced by “there are gods, but what they do is
limited by nature or necessity.” Physis (nature) governed everything with
little or no need of divine aid from external gods for the very reason that
“the divine” (to theion) had been blended into nature. From Anaximenes to
Democritus—​a good century and a half—​t he common wisdom stated that
the world was uncreated; it always existed and always will exist, whatever
changes it may undergo. Anaximines asserted that air was not created by
the gods, but the gods were created out of air. Heraclitus claimed that no
god or man created the world, but it was, is, and ever will be everlasting
fire. Cosmic air and fire contained their own causes of being and movement
within them, and lacked for nothing. For Democritus there were only two
things: atoms and void, and these are eternal. No cause is needed to set
atoms into motion, since atoms fall by their own weight. Perhaps ironically,
the thoughts of the cosmologists are indebted to the “mythological” poet
Hesiod, who tells us that the first things, void and earth (Chaos and Gaia),
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simply came into being. They were somehow generated, but there was no
generator. The first gods just happened, and the later gods were generated
by them. There was no one around to get it all started. Aristotle, of course,
later challenged the old poet and his Presocratic heirs with his notion of an
ultimate cause.1
There was firm consensus on another point. The cosmos and all of its
contents were composed of a material substance. All being was material, even
though there was contention over what the primary substance was, as outlined
in ­chapter 3. Even Anaxagoras’s nous was material. That philosopher may
have defined it as eternal and unmixed and apart from everything else, but it
was still the finest of substances, and what is fine implies measurement, and
therefore extension and weight. Melissos of Samos, a pupil of Parmenides,
described the idea of the One as asōmaton, “bodyless,” but it was by no means
clear whether he meant the universe as understood by his teacher, or the
Pythagorean number form.2 Apart from numbers understood as mental concepts, there was no thought of incorporeal being before Plato.
During the reign of physis, the physical allegorization of poetry was in
fashion, except for historians such as Hecataeus and Herodotus, who applied
the kind of rationalizing historiography to myths discussed in the previous
chapter. Of the allegorists, Theagenes of Rhegium defended Homer’s tales of
contention among the gods as warring among the elements, and Heraclitus
believed that Homer was wrong to lament these battles, since “all things happen by strife and necessity.”3 To this paradigm, add Prodicus of Ceos’s claim
that mortals call gods all things in nature that bring benefit to them. These
include the products of nature like bread and wine, which men call Demeter
and Dionysus. The hypothesis can be applied to the reading of myths, so that
when we encounter the name of Dionysius in a tale we should say that this is
just a story about wine. 4 The Stoic philosophers later followed the same path
with their physical allegory. When they encountered the name Zeus in a myth,
they did not think of Superman with lightning rods, but of the aether, that
fiery substance outside the earth’s atmosphere. In this view, myths are codes,
and codes are broken by recognizing a pattern of substitutions.
However tightly the paradigm of physis was constructed, the seeds of its
dissolution were already present. In the age of the first natural philosophers
there was already a strong undercurrent of theism—​theism, that is, defined as
a doctrine that placed the gods outside of nature. Of course, for most people
external gods continued to exist in the form of the traditional anthropomorphic gods. But for one important thinker, at least, an external god played a
significant role in the workings of the cosmos. Xenophanes, the most openly
theist of the Presocratics, asserted that there was “one god, greatest of all …
who shakes all things by the thought of his mind.”5 He did not go so far as
to say that this one god created the cosmos, but he did endow him with the
capacity to govern it. The notion that a single god moves the cosmos through
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a mental process, clearly asserted by Xenophanes, appears to have influenced
Anaxagoras. Nous (Mind), according to Anaxagoras,
… controls all things, both the greater and the smaller, that have
life. Mind controlled also the whole rotation, so that it rotates first
from a small area, but now rotates over a wider and will rotate over a
wider area still. And the things that are mingled and separated and
divided off, all are known by Mind. And all things that were to be, all
things that were but are not now, all things that are now or shall be,
Mind arranged them all, including the rotation, in which are now
rotating the stars, the sun and moon, the air and aither that are being
separated off.6
Interestingly, we learn that Mind is not only responsible for the ordering of
things, but also remains conscious of what it has ordered and will order. Mind
exists, and therefore must be a being; it is also a conscious being. It is also
made of some type of matter, though Anaxagoras does not use a word for
“matter,” but simply describes Mind as the “finest” (that is, most subtle) and
“purest” of all things.7 Is it then a living thing, or a person? More importantly,
is it a god? Anaxagoras does not say. Nevertheless, his notion of an intelligent
substance that starts and controls the cosmic process must have encouraged
others to carry his thought further and identify Mind with God. It is surprising that Anaxagoras was a stumbling block for the Athenian censors and witch
hunters, who charged him with the capital crime of impiety. Possibly his reticence about mentioning the gods, when other natural philosophers did so, led
to the charge.8
The paradigm of physis was intact at the beginning of the fourth century.
It had been developed by the natural philosophers from the sixth century on
and bolstered by the sophists in the fifth. It dissolved almost completely in
the fourth. There may be underlying social causes for this shift, including
the disheartenment that ensued during the long Peloponnesian Wars and the
political instability that occurred in Athens afterward. Those factors, at least,
are sometimes given by earlier scholars as the reason for the upsurge of theism.9 Whatever the cause, it is interesting that the founders of three of the
four major philosophical schools that came to dominate Greek thought were
decidedly theist in outlook. I refer to Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, who founded
the Academy, the Peripatetic School, and the Stoa, respectively. These were
three of the four great schools that were to dominate philosophy in antiquity.
The fourth school, named after its founder, Epicurus, built its doctrines on the
cosmology of the atomists, and thus remained resolutely nontheistic, though it
cautiously avoided atheism (see ­chapter 4).
The three theistic philosophers disagreed on many important issues, but
they were of a single mind when it came to god. God existed. Plato and the
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Stoics could still speak of god in the plural; for Aristotle, god was decidedly
singular. For all of them, god was a conscious living being, not some kind of
mechanical cosmic force. Most importantly, he created or started the cosmos.
Plato and the Stoics believed that he created it according to a plan and guides
it accordingly, while Aristotle hypothesized that he is the final cause of motion
in the universe. None of the three schools attempted to make their respective
gods into personal gods to whom one could pray; that was to come later. But
it was clear that by the start of the third century b.c.e., a new paradigm had
taken hold. Physis (nature) had been replaced by or subsumed into theos (god).
Nature could still claim her prerogatives, but she could not function independently of god.
The shift began with Plato, but it did not happen all at once. While Plato
mentions gods sporadically in his dialogues, he did not advance any speculation about the true nature of the divine (to theion) until he wrote his great work,
the Republic, in mid-​career. The aim of the book was to delineate the ideal
society and form of government. But in discussing the character of education needed to support this ideal polity, he attacked the ancient myths, as we
saw in ­chapter 5. In the same work Plato limns his theory of ideas, otherwise
called “forms.” These are notions of both physical and nonphysical things in
their ideal state. They cannot be sensed, and are knowable only to the mind.
Yet human minds do not generate the ideas. The ideas/​forms simply exist and
are available for minds to know. The forms constitute a world that exists on its
own. It is separated from things that are knowable by the senses. They exist
independently of the sensible world, and like the tree falling in the forest, they
would remain knowable, even if there were no one left to know them. Plato
illustrates his theory with the famous “Allegory of the Cave.”
Plato does not advance these hypotheses any further. He does not identify
the Good with god, though it was tempting for later thinkers to jump to that
conclusion. Nor does he define the forms as notions in the mind of god. That
was left to his successor Xenocrates to formulate.10 Even in Plato’s later work,
the forms remained detached. He does, however, advance a fully fledged theism in his late dialogue, Timaeus. This dialogue is one of the most enigmatic
of all Plato’s writings, yet it was to establish the pattern for theism, creationism, teleology (intelligent design), and a highly divinized cosmology for the
remainder of antiquity. One could even say that it later became equated with
Platonism itself.
The dialogue is presented in the form of a fable by a certain Timaeus.
Timaeus relates how a creator (demiourgos), also called god (theos), being good,
wanted to share that goodness by creating the cosmos. He made a world that
was “a living being” and as close to perfect as it could be without impinging
on the divine. However, it was not eternal. But the creator made an image of
eternity, which is called Time. Time is reckoned by the motions of the astral
bodies in a group of three and another of four (sun, our Mercury, Venus, then
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Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter). Their motions are coeval with the cosmos and
would cease, should the world disintegrate. The stars are “ensouled” and the
fixed stars described as “living animals.” The astral bodies that orbit the earth
are ensouled by the gods whose names they carry. The universe itself is a
sphere, which means that it contains all being within it. For that reason, there
cannot be multiple worlds, or infinite worlds, as the atomists claimed. There is
only one world, created by the demiurge, and regulated by the various divinities. But this world, the sensible world that was generated, was created according to the pattern of the eternal nature.11 In that sense, one could speak of two
worlds. The first world is perfect; the second as close to perfection as possible,
insofar as it imitates the first, and “participates” in it.
In his Timaeus Plato did not neglect the authority of the old poets. He
invokes Hesiod, but with a scheme to undermine him. After paraphrasing the
beginning of the Theogony, Plato has his god address an assembly of gods that
included all the generations from Gaia (Earth) to Zeus and Hera. He addresses
them all, “both those who visibly appear in their revolutions [that is, the gods
of the planets] as well as those gods of a more retiring nature”:
“Gods, children of gods, who are my works and of whom I am the
artificer and father, my creations are indissoluble, if so I will. All
that is bound may be undone, but only an evil being would wish to
undo that which is harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since ye are
but creatures, ye are not altogether indissoluble, but ye shall certainly
not be dissolved, nor be liable to the fate of death, having in my will
a greater and mightier bond than those with which ye were bound at
the time of your birth.”12
Thus, the universe is not by nature indissoluble, but indissoluble because of
the will of the demiurge. Plato, through Timaeus, not only establishes a clear
hierarchy of divinity, but he also gives a solution to an ancient problem that
Hesiod had raised. For the poet, the gods did not always exist; they came into
being at different times: the first ones mysteriously generated, the subsequent
generations through parthenogenesis (“virgin birth”) from Earth or from the
natural method of conception. They may be immortal, but they are not eternal.
Xenophanes first pointed to the paradox: “Those who say that the gods are
born are as impious as those who say that they die.”13 How is it possible that
the gods are immortal, but not eternal? Timaeus’s fable solves the problem
raised by the poets. There is only one truly eternal god. Because of his goodness, he creates the other gods to share his happiness and serve as governors
of the world. Simultaneously, the fable challenges the Hesiodic teaching, set
in stone, that the first gods generated themselves. (In this Plato is followed by
Aristotle.) And Plato through Timaeus challenges Heraclitus’s dictum that no
god or man created the universe. As for the universe itself, it is no longer to be
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seen as eternal, neither at the “beginning” nor at the “end.” It was created by
god at the very moment time was created through the astral bodies, and it is
held together, not by its own bonds, but by the will of god.
One must conclude that the fable of the Timaeus, which scholars in antiquity equated with Plato’s real views, runs directly counter to the vast majority of the teachings of the sixth-​and fifth-​century physical philosophers.
Certainly, it stands in opposition to the Ionians (the Milesian school as well
as Heraclitus), and to the atomists. It overturns the paradigm of physis and
substitutes the new paradigm of theos, in which the will of god is absolute.
Everything is god’s creation, and god can do with it what he wants.
Plato pushes even further the idea of intelligent design, a notion cast
into disrepute in the early twenty-​first century, as it is seen to be opposed
to Darwin’s theory of evolution.14 Plato opposes the reason (logos) of the
designer to necessity (anankē), what we would call “the laws of nature.” He
even describes necessity as “the errant cause,” a force or forces that must be
restrained by reason. The errant cause includes the four elements and their
motions; these existed before the creation of heaven. But they are as unintelligent as the elements (letters) that make up words (Plato plays on the meanings of Greek stoicheia, “elements”).15 The elements (or “necessity”) left to their
own devices run amok and create disorder. They represent the principle of
randomness espoused by the later atomists, in which atoms collide and briefly
hook up with other atoms until they find suitable partners, from these stable
relationships are born permanent things. Plato wants none of that. All must be
arranged for a better purpose, and that is the job of reason.16
It is easy to see why Christian intellectuals of a later age embraced
Platonism as represented in the Timaeus with almost unbridled enthusiasm. They understood the fable literally, as did the secular philosophers. The
“Platonists,” as Christians casually referred to the school—​when in fact they
meant the Plato of the Timaeus—​had provided them with a creator god, who
existed from all eternity and made a single cosmos that had a definite beginning. Its end depended on the will of the same god. All things within the
cosmos were created by that god and contingent upon his existence. The cosmos was created according to a perfect plan, and it was just one easy step to
locate that plan in the mind of god. When that happened, god became God.
As an added boon, the “Platonists” provided the philosophical foundations for
the immaterial soul, which, because it was immaterial, could endure forever.
Christian intellectuals were so impressed with Plato’s teachings that they
believed that he must have received some kind of private revelation from God,
or else had learned from the prophet Jeremiah when he visited Egypt!17
Plato’s theological ideas received qualified support from an unexpected
quarter. Aristotle, his greatest pupil, had challenged many of the master’s
theories. The central challenge was aimed at Plato’s theory of ideas. However,
Aristotle was deeply taken by Plato’s insight that the mere existence of matter
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does not explain things as they are. Why are there rivers and mountains and
seas, animals and people, and recognizable things, and not just meaningless
coagulations of matter? Plato raised and answered the question: it was form.
But for Aristotle the answer was wrongly formulated. One cannot separate
form (eidos or idea) from matter or stuff (hylē). All things require a formal
and a material cause. The form is inherent in things, and inseparable from
the function of a particular thing.18 Similarly, a thing cannot be if it does not
contain matter. No provision is made for immaterial things. Forms or ideas
cannot simply float in the aether. Plato claimed that souls are akin to the ideas;
they are separate from bodies. For Aristotle souls were simply the forms of
bodies (though he considered the notion that the rational portion of the soul
might be eternal).19 When souls were sundered from bodies at death, they had
no further function. Indeed, they no longer existed.
To some it would seem that Aristotle’s train ran off the track when it came
to the subject of god—​or should we say God? Aristotle was a close observer of
nature, and had a deep belief in physical laws that operate by necessity. Aristotle
stood squarely in the tradition of the Ionians who looked to nature for explanations. His work on biology and physics show a scholar not easily given to mysticism. The causes of things are to be found in nature herself. When it came
to the topic of the origin of motion, however, Aristotle was unpersuaded by
the atomist Leucippus and Plato (unlikely bedfellows indeed!) that motion was
eternal, and didn’t require its own cause. “For how will there be movement if
there is no actually existing cause?”20 Aristotle consistently opposed the notion
of randomness or chance in favor of an argument from necessity (although not
“necessity” in the sense used by Plato, who had called it “the errant cause”).21
One observes that everything that moves is moved by something else. But
there cannot be an indefinite series of motions. There must therefore be something that moves other things, but is not moved itself; in other words, a final
cause of motion. This is Aristotle’s unmoved mover. Now Aristotle could have
stopped there and said that the unmoved mover is some indefinable principle
of nature: we do not know what it is, only that it is. Or he could have simply
called it a god, without going any further. Astonishingly, he goes much further:
We say therefore that god is a living being, eternal, most good, so
that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to god; for this
is god.”22
And that is not all. Aristotle goes on to describe his god in a way that
would make some Christian scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth century
very happy:
It is clear then from what has been said there here is a substance
which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. It
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has been shown also that this substance cannot have any magnitude,
but is without part and indivisible … But it has also been shown that
it is impassive and unalterable; for all other changes are posterior to
change of place.23
If god is a substance without magnitude, then he is immaterial, for even the
smallest conceivable substances have magnitude. This can only mean that
Aristotle has made a huge concession to Plato in accepting the hypothesis of
an immaterial substance—​even if there is only one such substance, namely,
god (God). A happy consensus between a master and a recalcitrant pupil was
reached, at least on one crucial point.
We should not be tempted, however, to equate Aristotle’s unmoved mover
with Plato’s demiurge, or designer-​god. Aristotle tells us very little about what
god actually does apart from exercising his mind in contemplation. Although
described as “good,” unlike Plato’s demiurge, Aristotle’s god does not translate
his goodness into the act of creating or sustaining the world. The functions of
the origins, growth, and end of things are left to nature (physis). It appears that
nature takes over where god has left off. In book 5 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
discusses two basic senses of the word “nature”: (1) the genesis of growing
things (physis comes from a Greek verb meaning “to grow”); (2) the primary
material out of which any natural object is made. However, a more comprehensive insight into Aristotle’s concept of nature can be gleaned from book 2
of the Physics. In ­chapter 5 (198b –​99a) he distinguishes between the ideas of
randomness and necessity—​both being answers to the question of why things
happen. Aristotle sets out two scenarios to exemplify his distinction. In the
case of randomness, a farmer’s crops grow as a result of the rain; growth simply happens. (If one were to personify rain, Rain would be indifferent to the
fate of the farmer’s crop.) In the second scenario, rain falls in order to make
the farmer’s crop grow. (Rain would rejoice.) Aristotle summarizes as follows:
If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for
an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it
follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due
to nature even the champions of the theory before us would agree.
Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and
are by nature.24
Thus, Aristotle retains a firm footing in the paradigm of physis, while introducing the new element of a theos who gives the first impulse to the movement of the cosmos. (Recall that the earlier physical philosophers assumed
the eternity of motion as well as of matter.) It would seem that Aristotle’s god,
left to the joys of contemplation, does not interfere in any way with the workings of nature, which operate according to the iron dictates of necessity (which
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includes purposefulness). And if god does not intervene, the function of providence must be left to a benign nature, which (who?) always ordains things for
the best. Still, Aristotle does not entirely divorce God from nature. In a passage
in On the Heavens he portrays them as close associates: “But God and nature
create nothing that has not its use.”25
Aristotle, however, did not ask the question we would expect a physicist
to ask of himself: how can a being without any magnitude—​and therefore
without a body—​do anything at all, not to speak of setting the entire physical cosmos in motion? The Presocratic cosmologists remained steadfast in
their conception of god as a body, not just because they could not conceive of
an immaterial substance, but also because they believed that material bodies
could be moved only by other material bodies. (How does a ghost manage to
do stuff?) To say otherwise is to introduce the supernatural element, magic, or
hocus-​pocus—​the very thing that the critics strove to excise from myths. Plato
saw the difficulty. He tried to get around it by infusing the material universe
with an immaterial soul that would rule over the universe and make it divine.
The soul would fill every part of the cosmos (Tim. 34). But for the materially minded, that would just raise a new question: how can two substances
occupy the same space at the same time? Plato attempted a kind of mechanical
hypothesis for explaining the connection of the human body to its soul. The
creator inserted invisible pegs composed of the four elements to fuse them
together:
These [the four elements] they took and welded them together, not
with the indissoluble chains by which they were bound, but with little
pegs too small to be visible, and fastened the courses of the immortal
soul in a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux.26
The champions of physis would just laugh and ask, “How do the pegs grip, if
what they are fastening is thinner than the thinnest air?”
The Stoics, who were aware of the problem, wanted to insure that they
would never be caught in that metaphysical trap. Their cosmos was also infused
with a soul that they identified with god, but both were material. There was no
other kind of substance. The dualists could counter with “how then do you distinguish between god and ordinary matter? Is everything god?” The problem
seemed to be insoluble. But there was agreement among the three schools on
several important points: God preceded the universe and created it, or started
it moving (Plato, Aristotle), or else is the cause of its existence by being inherent in it (Stoics). God is eternal, not merely immortal (all three). God is good
(all three). God (Plato, Stoics), or nature (Aristotle) created the best possible
world, and all its parts are created to serve an intelligent purpose (all three).
There can be little doubt that by the end of the fourth century a new paradigm was in place, certainly among the intellectual class. Physis had ceded
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large tracts of its territory to theos. Plato’s divine world soul and the Stoic god,
also called the logos (a debt to Heraclitus), were both inherent in the cosmos
and governed it for all time. The universe did not just “happen,” but was
brought into being, or in some way initiated, by a god who is good. Plato and
Aristotle were in agreement that god preceded the cosmos in a causal sense,
though neither challenged the old wisdom that the elements (Plato) or matter
(Aristotle) were always “there.” On this issue, Aristotle went much further
than Plato, asserting that the whole structure of the cosmos was eternal and
uncreated.27 For the Stoics, god and the cosmos were always one, with god
enjoying a causal priority, if not a temporal one.
Hesiod’s paradigm, which had initiated the long reign of physis, was destined to disappear in the centuries that followed Plato. The randomness in
nature observed in the first beings was curtailed by Aristotle’s “necessity,”
Plato’s “will of God,” and the Stoic logos. Excepting Xenophanes, no Greek
thinker ever ceded authority over nature to god until Plato. However, Aristotle’s
decision to let god start things off, then retire to practice self-​contemplation, reestablished the teleological function in nature. Unhappily, Aristotle’s
voice was lost when his writings went missing for two centuries. When they
resurfaced they largely failed to have the impact they deserved. Intelligent
design was therefore the property of the Platonists, who attributed it to god/​
God. Further, the possibility that the universe was infinite in extension, or
that there could be multiple worlds, as the atomists hypothesized, was firmly
squelched by the founders of the three schools. There was only one world (that
is, cosmos), spherical in shape, and there was nothing outside it.
A final point regarding the nature of god: the pre-​C hristian Greeks
never abandoned the notion that there are many gods. Indeed, polytheism was to be one of the main sticking points that separated pagans from
Christians in late antiquity. In this respect the paradigm of the poets
remained unaltered. Homer’s “father of gods and men” was “theologized”
in Xenophanes’s “one god greatest of gods and men.” Plato spoke of god and
gods indifferently; so did the Stoics. One god could be the most powerful by
far, but that did not exclude the existence of other gods, or their importance.
I can only hazard a guess why this might have been so. The gods of the
Greeks never completely lost their human qualities. Even if one discarded
the naughty gods of Homer and conceived of them as models of moral perfection, as Xenophanes and Plato wished, one could not disassociate them
entirely from human nature. Humans live in families and societies; they
are social animals, which I think is a legitimate translation of Aristotle’s
politikon zōon (“an animal of the polis”). The gods, therefore, if they are to
be happy (and happiness is an essential quality of divinity) must also live
in families. A pure monotheism—​like that suggested in Aristotle’s solitary
god—​is thinkable, but most unattractive. Even Epicurus’s gods, who do very
little and have nothing to do with men, live in a community. This is perhaps
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the reason that Catholic Christianity, at any rate, depicts God in heaven with
his Son at his right side and his Son’s mother nearby, surrounded by choruses of angels and the blessed saints. In a more restrained way they reenact
the lives of Homer’s “happy gods” on Olympus.
Despite the theists’ agreement on many points, the chasm between a dualist concept of the cosmos (nonmaterial forms separate from physical things)
and a monist notion (there can be only matter) remained. This division was to
play itself out in the interpretation of myth. The Platonists, disregarding the
strictures of the master, went on to practice allegorical interpretation along
with their Stoic rivals. But their focus understandably reflected the interests of
their school: namely, God, the soul, and the objects of knowledge (the noetic
world). The Stoics, remaining steadfast in their monist position, looked to
myths for revelations about the physical world. They continued to look for god
in nature, or nature in god—​for they were the same. The development of the
differing interpretative strategies of these schools will be the subject of the
following chapters.
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9
The Growth of Allegory
As we saw in ­chapter 6, the beginnings of allegorical interpretation were
closely bound up with attempts to reconcile Homer and Hesiod’s myths with a
developing cosmology that based its theories of the origin and operation of the
world on the laws of nature. In that paradigm the gods existed and had some
role or other in governing things, but they did not make the world, and were
themselves subject to the laws of nature. At the same time, a total makeover
of the anthropomorphic gods of the poets was required. They could no longer
look and act like mortal men with all their desires and frailties, nor could they
perform wonders like tribal shamans. In order to preserve the authority of the
poets, the defenders of poetry had to interpret the gods of the Iliad, Odyssey,
and Theogony in ways that emphasized their connection to nature. No small
task that, but with the aid of allegory it could be achieved. The squabbling gods
of myth could be transmogrified into the warring elements of science. Kronos
with his sickle could be made into venerable Father Time. The alchemy of allegory worked its magic. A new cosmology and new theology were established,
while the authority of the poets remained intact.
Myths, however, can be read either in the context of the poems—​in which
case the intention of the poet is up for discussion—​or as freestanding stories.
Not all interpretation of myth had to be related directly to the study of the
poets; they could be discussed independently. This may have been the case
with the earliest Stoic interpretations; it is hard to tell, as what survives of the
earliest Stoic myth exegesis is mostly fragments.1 In any case, however one
approached “myth” used in the broad sense, one had to follow a road that led
through the poets. At all events, the survival and growth of allegory is closely
related to developments in two of the three theistic schools, the Stoics and the
Platonists. Both schools eagerly adopted allegory as a teaching tool for elucidating their respective doctrines.
The Stoics believed that god and the cosmos were one, and thus the cosmos
was divine. The Platonists who took the Timaeus as their central text believed
that god created the universe and suffused it with his own being. On this last
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point, Stoics and Platonists scarcely differed from each other. However, there
was an unbridgeable gap between them with regard to matter. For the Stoics,
all substances, including god, were material. No nonmaterial substance could
exist. Platonists remained true to their founder in accepting dualism. They
posited two worlds: the world of matter, which was unstable and therefore constantly changing, and the world of forms, which were eternal and immutable.
God made a world of matter, which he ensouled, thus uniting what might
have remained two irreconcilable worlds into a single cosmos. The soul of the
cosmos was akin to the ideas; it had no dimensions or weight.
Both schools believed that the cosmos was divine, and that god was imminent in the world. Both believed that god continued to sustain the world. For
the Stoics, however, matter—​the sole stuff from which the world was made—​
had to be divine, since god and the world were identical. The gods of the poets,
interpreted as physical elements, could be put to use as the divine elements of
the cosmos. The elements earth, air, fire, and water were all divine. The gods
that symbolized them, which were neither anthropomorphic gods nor primitive nature spirits, could be repurposed as divinized elements (archai). Zeus
now had new life as fire and the fiery aether, while his consort Hera was consigned to the lower air. The myths of the poets were cosmological fables that
could be used to teach Stoic cosmology, much as Plato devised his own fables
to teach Platonic philosophy.
While soul had an important place in Stoic philosophy, for Plato, soul was
paramount. Not only did he see soul as that which sustained the being of the
cosmos, but he returned time and again to investigate the individual human
soul. Soul is the central subject of the Phaedrus and the Phaedo, and it figures
prominently in the Republic, Meno, Symposium, and Timaeus. The nous, the
rational part of the soul, is not merely immortal; it is eternal, for it existed in
the countless aeons before it descended into bodies and will live on forever
after leaving them. Plato argued for its preexistence in the Meno, where he
famously tried to show that all true knowledge is remembering—​the recollection, prompted through questioning, of the forms imprinted from eternity
on the rational part of the soul. Plato described “the other end of eternity” in
the Myth of Er, which describes the fate of souls after death. The rational soul
is able to survive death precisely because it is not made of matter—​hence,
not made of those very fine atoms that the Epicureans describe as dissolving at the moment of bodily death. Nearly all of the fables Plato composed to
illustrate his philosophy have the soul as their subject. It is no wonder, then,
that when Platonists turned to Homer, they looked for passages that could
confirm Plato’s teachings on the soul itself, or the properties of the soul such
as virtue. Not surprisingly, the Platonists concentrated their attention mainly
on Homer’s poems, which contains a limited amount of cosmology, while the
Stoics directed their efforts more to Hesiod precisely because his work is cosmological and was so recognized in antiquity.
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So began two types of allegorical interpretation that reigned in the world
of letters in the Hellenistic age and later antiquity: the physical allegory of
the Stoics and the psychological allegory of the Platonists. They came from a
single source, the theistic impulse of the fourth century. They branched into
two basic types, one reflecting the physical cosmology of the Stoics, the other
concentrating on the rational soul theory of the Platonists. The two interpretative methods were not hermetically (or hermeneutically) sealed; the two types
are often mingled.2 Indeed, we saw this mixing in the fragment of Theagenes
that gives the earliest evidence for allegory.
A defining feature of allegorical interpretation from the fourth century
b.c.e. onward is etymology, the practice of tracing words or names to their
roots in order to gain a fuller understanding of their meaning. In modern
times, refinements in historical linguistics have raised the practice to a science. Languages are now classified into families and subdivided into branches.
By working through the family genealogies (across the branches), one can discover the ur-​ancestor of a word or name. As illustration, the modern French
word dieu, “god,” comes from Latin deus (Latin is the head of a family branch
called Romance), while deus, through comparison with Greek dios (“divine”
or “belonging to Zeus”), Old Irish dí, and Sanskrit dīvā, establishes the Indo-​
European (name of the whole family) root *dy- ​ə -​wo, meaning “bright” or “celestial.”3 The gods shine in the sky, so to speak. The Greeks had not advanced so
far in their study of languages. They had to rely largely on guesswork based on
their own language. Thus, they derived the name of Zeus from zēn, “to live,”
perhaps because zen was an ancient form of the name Zeus in the accusative case (objective case in English), and it sounded the same as zēn, “to live.”
However, according to the modern derivation, Zeus should be grouped with
the words meaning “shining” and “celestial.”
Greek exegetes were interested in etymology chiefly because they believed
it could reveal the meanings of the names of the gods, and so teach them
their functions and properties. At the same time, they grasped that because
the gods were the chief actors in myths, uncovering the meaning of a god’s
name would simultaneously decode the myth. As already noted, a catalogue
of inappropriate myths had been developed at an early stage—​certainly before
Plato and even before Xenophanes, for that matter—​and these stories sullied
the reputation of the poets. Allegory could render the offensive stories harmless by substituting a natural phenomenon for an anthropomorphic god with
human vices. This had already been established by Theagenes. But suppose a
skeptic should quiz Theagenes, and ask, “How do you know that Poseidon is
just a substitute for water?” Theagenes might reply, “Well, it’s always been that
way; it is a natural association.” But if the skeptic is unhappy with the answer,
etymology can be summoned to the rescue. One ancient etymology derives
Poseidon from posis, “drink, drinking.”4 That is all the information needed to
disprove Homer’s claim that a god called Poseidon tried to drown Odysseus;
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the near drowning was caused by Odysseus drinking (posis) too much water.
Homer is spared another beating.
Perhaps the worst of all the “bad myths” is the tale of Kronos devouring his children. It was a topic that people with good manners would want to
avoid. Hesiod’s account makes it clear that the god’s motives are quite wicked.
Etymology to the rescue! Since the name Kronos bears a close resemblance to
the Greek word chronos, “time,” the meaning of the tale is at once made clear
and free of moral taint. “Kronos devouring his children” means nothing more
than the fact that “time devours all of Earth’s children.” Similarly, the episode
of Kronos’s castration of Ouranos could be interpreted to mean something
like “Time severs the life force.” (Curiously, no one wondered why such banal
truths were considered deep mysteries that required scurrilous stories to conceal them.) The task of the interpreter is simply to uncover the meaning of a
name of the personified character with the aid of etymology, and once that was
done, the meaning of the myth would be obvious. The method embraced the
interpretation of the names of other gods. Hera, for example, could be reduced
to the natural element air just by scrambling the letters of her name. In Greek
her name is spelled HPA (pronounced hēra), which when reversed yield AHP
(pronounced aër), the Greek word for air.
Sound plays an important role in validating the substitution claimed. If
I say, “Hera is the air,” you may well ask, “How do you know that?” I would
answer, “Just use your ears. When I say Hera can’t you hear the word ‘air’ whistling through? The aural association became even stronger over time as the
initial h-​sound weakened. Homer could without a care substitute Hephaestus
(the fire god) for fire, but I suspect that an etymologizer would feel obliged to
invoke a connection to the close-​sounding hephestios, “having to do with the
hearth” (ep’ + hestia, “on the hearth”).5
Unlike the earliest physical allegorists such as Prodicus and Metrodorus,
who banked on age-​old associations between divinities and things in nature,
the Stoics relied heavily on etymology to support their interpretations. They
continued their practice of physical allegorization well after the beginnings
laid by the founding fathers, Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus. The Stoics,
to be sure, were not the pioneers of the etymologizing craze.6 Traces of name
explanations can be found in Homer and Hesiod, as well as the dramatic
poets, especially Euripedes, and in Heraclitus. Antisthenes and Cratylus,
associates of Socrates, essayed a theory of language that holds that language
is made up of just a few sounds, and individual sounds express meanings
that correspond to the sounds. The idea is explored fully in Plato’s dialogue
Cratylus, in which Socrates demonstrates that sounds by nature have little to
do with meaning. Later Platonists seem not to have noticed what the master
had to say on the subject, for they were as enthusiastic about the usefulness
of etymology for decoding myths, or supporting interpretations, as were their
Stoic counterparts.
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Whereas the few mythological interpretations ascribed to the Stoic founders (Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus) are fragments and consist mostly of etymologies of gods’ names,7 a complete work on myth exegesis by the Stoic
philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus has survived. Cornutus was born in
Leptis Magna (in Libya) and was active in Rome in the first century c.e. He
was implicated in a conspiracy against Nero and exiled in 66 c.e. His work (in
Greek) translates as A Summary [Epidrome] of the Traditions concerning Greek
Mythology. Cornutus alludes to a number of the chief Stoic teachings, including the periodic conflagration of the cosmos, and uses familiar Stoic terminology. The interpretations are based almost entirely on Hesiod’s Theogony.
They consist mostly of the etymologies of divine names, but, importantly, also
include a few interpretations of whole myths.
While much of Cornutus’s work, like that of his predecessors, is limited to
the etymologies of names, there are several passages where he gives interpretations of whole myths. In the first book of his Summary, he gives an extended
exegesis of the myth of Rhea and Kronos, followed by the story of Kronos
and Gaia (Earth), stories that occur in reverse order in Hesiod’s Theogony.
Cornutus begins with the standard etymology of Rhea’s name, Flowing, associating her with rainfall and thunderstorms and even with mountains, since
waters flow down from them. He describes her as wearing a wreath decorated
with towers, and speculates that that is because the first cities were built on
mountains or because the archetypal city is the cosmos itself. She is honored
with the poppy, because that flower is appropriate to the goddess who is the
cause of the generation of living things. Other symbols appear on her bosom
that represent the great variety of things that have being.
After some remarks regarding Rhea’s similarity to Syrian and Phrygian
goddesses, Cornutus proceeds to the kernel of the myth of Rhea and Kronos,
the devouring of their children by Kronos. He explains that this is because
everything that arises in the cyclical movement of the cosmos must disappear in the same way, and that the nature of Time (Kronos = Chronos, “time”)
is such that everything born within her is devoured. The second part of the
Rhea and Kronos story involves Rhea’s deceit of her monstrous husband. After
giving birth to Zeus, Rhea spirits the infant away and substitutes a stone for
Kronos’s dinner. Kronos seizes the bait and Zeus is saved to become the future
ruler of the universe. Cornutus interprets the story thus:
The episode of the swallowing of the stone should be understood
otherwise. The story is really about the origins of the cosmos, in which
a directing nature was nourished and ruled over it, when this stone,
which we call the earth, was firmly anchored in his midst, as though
it had been swallowed. For otherwise the things that are could not
have come into being, if they had not been erected, so to speak, on this
foundation, since all things come into being and are nourished here.8
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Here we have what can properly be called an exegesis of a complete story.
The interpreter assembled the interpretations in a way that corresponds to
the actions in the original story. Here the directing nature (dioikousa physis)
is Nature herself, who ruled the cosmos at that time, that is, in the age of
Kronos. The stone is the earth. When the earth is swallowed [by Kronos] it is
anchored in Time. The earth provides the foundation of everything that comes
into being and is nourished. This part of the story is implicitly linked to the
beginning. Since the earth is anchored in Time, everything that is born from
her and nourished by her is devoured.
Next, Cornutus turns to the lurid story of the castration of Ouranos by
his son Kronos. Cornutus’s brief summary combines this episode with the
overthrow of Kronos by Zeus, and the imprisonment in Tartarus of the father
by the son. In his explanation of the episodes Cornutus resorts to a different
etymology of Kronos, connecting the name to the verb krainein, “to bring to
completion.” Cornutus expected his readers to know the whole story as related
by Hesiod, so he does not tell the fate of the severed organs. Here is what
Hesiod had to say about them:
But that was not the end of them. The drops of blood that spurted
from them were all taken in by Mother Earth, and in the course of
the revolving years she gave birth to the powerful Erinyes [Spirits of
Vengeance] and the huge Giants with shining armor and long spears.
As for the organs themselves, for a long time they drifted around the
sea just as they were when Cronus cut them off with the steel edge
and threw them from the land into the waves of ocean; then white
foam issued from the divine flesh, and in the foam a girl began to
grow … She is called Aphrodite by gods and men, because she grew
9
in the froth. …
It is obvious that these omitted details prompted the interpretation of the
myth: Cronus/​K ronos’s action resulted in the watering of the earth’s atmosphere, causing its exhalations to be finer. The reversal that followed, namely,
imprisonment of Kronos in Tartarus, had the happy effect of extending the
lifespan of the cosmos. I can only guess that Cornutus meant that, if Kronos
had lived out his reign to the end, he would have brought a terminus to the
age he ushered in, and the periodic interruption of the cosmic cycle with its
entailed cosmic conflagration would have occurred. Zeus’s usurpation ensured
a prolongation of the cycle. That interpretation, at least, would be consistent
with Stoic cosmology.
While the interpretation does account for the whole myth—​
allowing
for the omission of coarse details that readers were expected to know (and
better left unsaid)—​we would probably regard such interpretations today as
far-​fetched, even counterintuitive. To the modern reader, the obvious point
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of Hesiod’s fable is that it “explains” the simultaneous origins of violence
(the creation of the Spirits of Vengeance) and sex (the birth of Aphrodite). It
is thus aetiological. It “explains” the human condition in the same way that
the Garden of Eden story “teaches” us how death, labor, and childbirth came
about. However, Cornutus gets credit for saving the face of his great authority
and reconciling the myth with Stoic cosmology. That is his main task. In doing
this he was following in the footsteps of his distant master, Chrysippus. It is
said that when the great Stoic philosopher was confronted with a wall painting
depicting Hera performing fellatio on Zeus, he explained the act as the interaction between divinity (Zeus) and matter (Hera).10
The ancient critics of myths tended to zero in on a restricted few stories,
especially ones considered outrageous or morally disgusting. These included
the same tales mentioned by Plato in the Republic. In addition to the antics of
Kronos and the ejection of Hephaestus from Olympus with its crippling effect,
the episode of Zeus’s suspending Hera from the sky was ever ripe for discussion. Zeus used golden chains for this and fastened anvils to her feet (Il. 15,
18–​19). This was not the first time Zeus abused his devoted wife. But Cornutus
takes no interest in the violent aspect of the tale, nor does he exploit the prurience of his readers by calling attention to Hera’s undignified posture. The
story, for him, is purely of cosmological interest: the gold of the chains reflects
the golden sheen of the stars, and the anvils symbolize the earth and the sea,
both of which serve to hold down the air (Hera, of course) and prevent it (her)
from being torn away from either of them. Cornutus labels the episode “as a
paraphrase of a fragment of an ancient myth” (Epid. 17.1).
Cornutus breaks with the Presocratic interpreters and with Plato by denying that myths are invented stories (plasmata). On that account one should not
mix them up or take names from one myth and carry them over to another
(Epid. 17.3) Rather, myths are products of great antiquity, a point just illustrated in his comment on the aerial suspension of Hera. This sets Cornutus in
the company of Aristotle, who regarded myths as tales that are “handed down”
(paradidomena); they are paraphrases of much older stories. What, then, do we
make of allegory, if we do away with authorial intention? What happens to the
idea that Homer and Hesiod “made things up,” or that they said one thing and
meant another? Or that the poets placed a veil over their meaning, so that only
the very wise could grasp it?
Such questions are impossible to answer with certainty, but I suspect
that Cornutus believed that cosmological meanings are inherent in the myths
themselves; they are simply “there.” In other words, there is no real disjunction between myth and cosmological truth, though the poets had distorted
them with their foolish tales that made the gods no better than men. In this
view, since poets did not invent myths, there were no authorial intentions to
be sussed out. The poet’s job was simply to tell the stories well. Such would
be consistent with Hesiod’s own explanation of the poetic process: “They [the
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Muses] breathed into me their divine voice, so that I might tell of things to
come and things past, and ordered me to sing of the race of the blessed gods,
who live forever… .”11
Cornutus proceeds to show the coherence of myth and true cosmology by
summarizing Hesiod’s account of the origin of the cosmos in the order given
by the poet. Myths are taken for what they are, neither for inventions (plasmata)
nor for lies (pseudē). Cornutus does not contradict his source, nor does he suggest what the poet might have meant. He simply searches his source for statements that can be made consistent with Stoic cosmology. Accordingly, Hesiod’s
“first thing,” Chaos, can be identified with the moist element that existed
before the ordering (diakosmesis) of the cosmos. That identification had been
posed already by Zeno.12 Moisture (water) was one of the two archai posited by
the Stoics; the other was heat (fire).13 Alternatively, Chaos could be fire, the principle of the world’s origin. Both interpretations involve etymologies. However,
the important point, I believe, is that the truth of the poem is right on the surface. Chaos is the first thing to come into being. Chaos belongs to the ancient
myth; the poet (here Hesiod) did not substitute Chaos for something else.
Cornutus’s book is a landmark in the history of interpretation. Because
it is complete and sometimes deals with whole myths, it provides a window by which we can loosely reconstruct the procedures of earlier Stoic
interpreters. (This has been shown by the sourcing of Cornutus’s text,
which reveals numerous parallels with the fragments of the founders.) By
Cornutus’s time (first century c.e.), etymological explanations had become
indispensable for allegorical interpretation. There is no logical reason that
this should be so, since allegories can be composed without them, as Plato
proved. Moreover, etymologies could shift, as we noted in the interpretations of the Kronos stories, in which Cornutus starts with Kronos at first
derived from Chronos (Time), then shifts to a derivation from krainein, “to
bring to completion.” Roman authors had to accommodate etymologies to
the Latin language, a process that entailed providing completely different
explanations for the names of essentially the same god. Zeus and Jupiter
were conflated in Roman times into a single god, but they had completely
different names, one Greek, one Latin. This meant they had to have different etymologies. So, for example, the name Zeus is said to come from zen,
“to live,” whereas Iovis (alternate form of Jupiter) was derived from iuvare,
“to help.”
These multiple possibilities of explaining the names of the same god
did not seem to bother the Stoics. We see how one representative of Stoicism,
Lucilius Balbus, managed to reconcile Greek and Latin etymologies in explaining the story of Kronos and his children:
He is called Kronos, which is the same as Chronos, and means lapse
of time, just as our Roman name Saturn means “sated with years.” In
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mythology he is said to have devoured his own children, just as age
eats up the passing years and is fed but never satiated as the years
go by.14
Stoic interpreters were content to adapt the etymology needed to suit the interpretation they wanted. If they wished to explain Kronos’s act of eating his
children, they turned him into Time. Alternatively, if they wished to associate
him with the completion of the natural order, they called him the Finisher.
The name or etymology of a name in a given myth had what might be called
a “one-​to-​one” relationship with the specific function of the god in the story.
Zeus could be, by turns, the source of life (following his etymology from zen,
“to live”), or the aether (the fiery upper air), or thunder (his attribute in iconography was the thunderbolt), or the whole sky (in expressions such as “Zeus
rains”). Thus a single etymology is not always seen as essential to the interpretative process. Balbus provides a good illustration of this principle:
Our soothsayers refer thunder and lightning to Jupiter, saying “Jupiter
lightens” or “Jupiter thunders” … The air, however, as the Stoics
argue, being interposed between the sea and the sky, is worshipped
under the name belonging to Juno, who is the sister and wife of
Jupiter. There is an affinity between the air and aether and they are
closely linked together. The air was regarded as the softest and most
feminine of the elements and was therefore assigned to Juno. The
name, however, I believe to be derived from iuvare (“to help”).15
It is notable that in this passage only Juno (the Roman Hera) is given an etymology (“to help”), which is meant to underscore the claimed affinity between
aether and air: the air can be seen as “assisting,” that is, supporting, the bright
aether that is above it (just as a wife supports her husband). Etymology is frequently summoned as an aid to understanding, but often very ancient associations of divine names and things are simply taken as understood, even when
there is no obvious etymology. The Stoics and everybody else had to accept that
the name Zeus did not sound at all like aither (“aether”), astrapē (“lightning”),
brontē (“thunder”), or ouranos (“sky”), and had to be content with traditional
understandings based on the functions of a god in myth or religion.
Lucilius Balbus is the spokesman for the Stoic position on the gods in
the second book of Cicero’s dialogue, On the Nature of the Gods. That is about
all that is known of him. Cicero has Balbus contend in a debate with an
Epicurean and an Academician (essentially a skeptic) on the questions of the
existence of gods, their nature, their governance of the world, and their care
for mankind. Much of what he says undoubtedly reflects Cicero’s own understanding of Stoicism as well as his opinions on religion. Practically all of this
falls outside the scope of our book. However, Balbus’s ideas on the nature of
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the gods—​what sorts of beings called gods are really gods—​do impact on the
interpretation of myth. Moreover, Balbus appears in a dialogue that is mostly
intact. The upshot is that we have a coherent text, rather than a group of fragments, that gives us some idea of the positions of the various philosophical
schools in the first century b.c.e. that have relevance to the interpretation
of myth.
Cicero’s dialogue is a very different kind of work from Cornutus’s
Summary. Cicero’s book is directed to questions about the nature of the gods,
while Cornutus wants to see how the names of the gods explain their function
in particular myths. Balbus, after arguing the existence of the gods, attempts
to classify all the different beings to which the name “god” is applied. Cornutus
doesn’t have to worry about such questions. He simply takes the names of gods
as given in the myths and builds his interpretations from them. Cicero via
Balbus leads us back to basic questions about divinity that had been raised earlier. He gives a nod to Prodicus’s idea that those things which confer benefits
on mankind were deified by men of old. Is Ceres truly something divine, or
just plain bread? Balbus hints at Hesiod’s tale of Pandora’s box when he tells
us that a Roman named Calatinus had set up a monument to Hope (2.61).
This, of course, reprises the question of how to read abstractions when they
occur in myths. Do we see Faith and Reason, or Virtue, as real gods to whom
we can pray, as manifestations or emanations of the divine, or simply abstract
concepts devised by the human mind? And, following Plato, by invoking the
planets and stars as ensouled, Balbus prompts us to investigate traditional
myths that involve the metamorphosis of a mortal into a star or constellation
(Callisto turned into the Great Bear), or a life divided between the heavens and
earth (Castor and Pollux).
We have seen how Cornutus avoided attributing the authorship of a
myth to a poet, and in one significant passage called a story “a fragment of an
ancient myth.” Balbus appears to take the same tack, referring to the Kronos
tale as “an old legend of the Greeks.” Moreover, the myths of the gods contain
scientific truths in their nature, but these were turned into the fables of the
poets that corrupted human life with superstition.
A great number of gods have also been derived from scientific
theories about the world of nature. Endowed with human shapes,
they have provided fables for the poets and have permeated human
life with every form of superstition. This subject has been treated by
Zeno and explained in greater length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus.
For example, it was an old legend of the Greeks that the Sky-​God
[Ouranos] was mutilated by his son Saturn [Kronos] and Saturn in
his turn was made captive by his son Jupiter [Zeus]. These impious
tales are merely the picturesque disguise of a sophisticated scientific
theory. Those who invented them felt that the high and fiery nature
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of the Sky-​God should have no use for those parts of the body which
require intercourse with another to beget a child.16
The passage requires some unpacking. Working from the bottom line, we find
a physical theory that asserts the Stoic claim that a fiery aetherial nature is
responsible for the generation of everything. (The Stoics had taken on board
Heraclitus’s idea that fire is the archē of all things.) Let us return to the top of
the passage: the authors of myths had described this element as the source of
a multitude of gods. (Afterward) the poets dressed these natural divinities in
human garb, thereby spreading every kind of superstition. The founders of
Stoicism uncovered the ruse and explained the original meaning of the stories. These original meanings, Balbus believes, would have been in the minds
of the author of the myths (not the poets). In the refined “original” versions of
the myths, procreation would not have proceeded according to human custom.
Saturn (Ouranos) did not need a penis, and by extension, other gods did not
require one, either. The conclusion simultaneously eliminates all the tales of
the gods seducing mortal women to produce heroes.
Interpreted thus, the passage sheds light on the early Stoic theory on the
origin of myths. Myths are not the creations of poets (at least not in their
original form); they were the brain children of a great cosmologist who lived
in the distant past. This deep thinker (or thinkers) is not identified. The poets
corrupted the stories with their anthropomorphic notions and turned the gods
into fallible beings like humans, breeding superstition as their tales moved
through human societies. Such was the conclusion of Zeno and his immediate followers. As we have seen, three centuries later Cornutus views myths as
very ancient stories, and the intentions of their authors never come into focus.
The act of interpretation is then no longer an act of uncovering the specific
intention of a poet, but rather in finding a possible meaning or meanings
in the “original” myth. Cornutus, at points, suggests that original meanings
might be recoverable by comparing Greek myths with those of other cultures.
He notes, for example, that the myth of Demeter and Hades shows parallels
with the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris and the Phoenician tale of Adonis.
In other words, we may be able to recoup ancient wisdom by seeing beyond a
purely local version of a myth.17 However, the ancient wisdom that Cornutus
discovers more often than not turns out to be consistent with Stoic cosmological doctrine.
Up to this point we have seen only hints by ancient writers at a proper
discussion of allegory. Even the word “allegory” (allegoria) did not surface until
the first century b.c.e., when Cicero, writing in Latin, classified it as a figure
of speech. Cicero equated allegory with extended metaphor, and thus saw it
as a tool available to writers (Orator 27.94). The word had not yet assumed the
meaning “to understand something in a figurative sense.” To express this,
the Greeks relied on Plato’s term hyponoia, literally, “underthought,” that is,
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the sense that lies below the surface meaning. We had to wait until Plutarch
to learn that hyponoia had been replaced by allegoria. One critic, possibly a
Stoic, who left a full treatise illustrating the method of allegorical interpretation was a certain Heraclitus, thought to have lived in the first century c.e. (We
shall refer to him as Heraclitus the Younger to avoid confusion with the more
famous Heraclitus of Ephesus, who has figured prominently above.)
Heraclitus the Younger’s book Homeric Problems consists of explanations
of “problematic” passages in the Iliad. Heraclitus was the first to state unambiguously that allegory is “a method of composition [he calls it a ‘figure’] that
speaks of a matter in such a way that it signifies a second thing that is entirely
different.”18 For example, he interprets a description of a sea storm in a poem by
Alcaeus (seventh–​sixth century b.c.e.) as an allegory (metaphor) for a conspiracy to establish a tyranny.19 Elsewhere he explicitly stated that “since the trope of
allegory is familiar to all other writers and even to Homer, what should prevent
us mending his alleged wrong notions about the gods by this kind of justification?”20 Heraclitus believed that allegory belonged to the intention of the writer,
and this fact justified an allegorical interpretation on the part of the reader. The
assertion also illustrates faith in “the doctrine of present things”: the belief that
what is true today must have been true in the past as well.
This Heraclitus’s work stands firmly in a long tradition of treatises on
Homer that concentrate on select passages, in particular ones that are morally
problematic or challenge our credulity. It is likely that many of the bothersome Homer passages were the same from treatise to treatise (for example,
a god sending a misleading dream, Hephaestus thrown out of heaven, Hera
suspended by chains, the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares). Unfortunately,
these are lost except for their titles and some quotations in later sources, leaving Heraclitus’s book as a precious witness to how earlier treatises were organized. The Homeric Problems are organized by work, Iliad first, then Odyssey,
and generally follow the order of the narratives. Heraclitus sets out to rebut
the attacks by Homer’s “enemies”—​Plato and Epicurus belong to this group.
In defending Homer, Heraclitus does not stick strictly to naturalistic interpretations, but also ventures into psychological explanations. Nor does he
attempt to maintain consistent interpretations throughout, but changes his
explanations to suit each individual myth. However, in contrast to Cornutus,
Heraclitus was confident that myths came from poets, and poets disguised
their real intentions.
Heraclitus the Younger was nothing if not ingenious. His take on Apollo’s
bow-​and-​arrow attack on the Greek army at the beginning of the Iliad might
even today win plaudits for its cleverness. He points out that Homer’s usual
name for Apollo is Phoebus “the shining or radiant one.” (Heraclitus is right
about that.) Accordingly, Homer is talking about the sun. Homer describes
Phoebus as “far-​working,” which is logical, given that the sun, even though
distant from the earth, has a great effect on it. Apollo’s arrows are the rays of
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the sun, which are the main source of epidemics. Plagues are caused by corruption of the atmosphere when summers are too hot and dry. Accordingly,
the event described by Homer should not be attributed to the anger of a god,
but to natural changes in the atmosphere (H.P. 8.1–​7). At a single stroke
Heraclitus has shown that Homer is knowledgeable about medicine (as well
as many other subjects) and should not be accused of attributing shameful
acts to the gods. In discussing the “bad myth” of Zeus’s suspension of Hera
in the sky, he writes:
It has escaped their notice that this passage contains a theological
account of the creation of the universe, and that the order of these
lines corresponds to the constantly celebrated four elements, of which
I have already spoken: first aether, then air; then water; and finally
earth: the creative elements of the universe. Combined with one
another, these create animals and are the origin of inanimate things.21
Fire is not mentioned among the elements in the passage, because Zeus,
as aether, is fire. So much at least is Stoic. So is his exegesis of the Homeric
“unbreakable bond” (desmon … arrēkton): “since the harmony of the universe is secured by unbreakable bonds.”22 Whether or not Heraclitus was a
dyed-​in-​the-​wool Stoic seems beside the point. He concentrates on cosmology
and frequently invokes Stoic doctrines. Heraclitus not only argues in favor
of authorial intention, but also frequently interprets by substitution. Apollo
does not shoot arrows at the Greeks to avenge his wronged priest, but the sun
(that is, Apollo) in the summer months causes a plague by means of its rays
(arrows): “It is not the wrath of Apollo angry without cause, but a philosophical idea related to scientific speculation.” (16.5). Interestingly, even though
Heraclitus the Younger attributes the authorship of the myth to the poet, he
confesses a Stoic attachment to the notion that a philosophical or scientific
theory lies behind the fable.
Heraclitus the Younger was no stranger to etymology. He used it adeptly
to explain the many-​faceted character of Proteus, the shape shifter who would
metamorphose into a new form even as one wrestled with him and tried to
pin him down.
Proteus’ daughter is Eidothea—​justly so called, for she is the vision
[thea] of every form [eidos]. This is why Proteus, originally a single
being [physis] was divided into many forms, being so fashioned by
providence.23
Heraclitus proceeds from his etymology to define the true nature of Proteus.
We should not believe that such a supernatural being existed. Homer, rather,
is weaving another allegory of creation:
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It is reasonable then that formless matter should be called Proteus, that
the Providence which formed everything should be called Eidothea,
and that everything which derives from these two principles, once
separated out, should be divided into continuous masses which are
constitutive of the universe.24
The notion of constituent elements that are “continuous” is Stoic.25 Heraclitus,
then, is not so different from Cornutus in concentrating on cosmological
myths and relating them to Stoic doctrine wherever he can. What differentiates him from Cornutus, and perhaps the older Stoics, is his consistent attribution of the origin of the myths to Homer (not an anonymous mythoplast), and
his deep conviction that Homer not only created the myths but also instilled
them with hidden cosmological meanings:
It seems to me that the reason why Homer allegorizes so constantly
about these matters is to make the obscurity which seems to threaten
his lines more intelligible by continuous inculcation of the lesson.26
Myth criticism and philosophy were joined at the hip. Just as Plato did, the
poets before him employed fable to make the inculcation of deep philosophical truths easier and more enjoyable for students. For Heraclitus the Younger,
Homer was a philosopher. Despite Stoic influences on Heraclitus’s exegesis,
his regard for the wisdom of the poets distinguished him from mainstream
Stoicism.
The truths the philosophers taught, of course, depended on the doctrines of the particular philosophical school engaged in their exegesis. The
Stoic tradition from its founder Zeno to Cornutus posited an initial revelation, an ancient wisdom that was corrupted by the poets. The doctrines of this
ancient wisdom are principally “scientific,” that is, centered on cosmological
and physical truths. They happen to coincide with the physical doctrine of the
Stoics. The ancient wisdom can be recovered only by clearing away the tissue
of falsehoods engendered by the poets.27 Allegory, coupled with etymology,
became the primary tool for achieving that objective. For Stoics, the application of allegory did not recover the intention of the poet, as Heraclitus the
Younger believed, but rather the ancient wisdom that was revealed in a distant
age. In their search for a definitive revelation the Stoics demonstrate how far
they had come from the progressive ideal of Xenophanes: “Yet the gods have
not revealed all things to men from the beginning; but by seeking, men find
out better in time.”28
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10
Saving the Poets without Allegory
All of the types of interpretation we have dealt with up to now are in some
sense species of allegory. Allegory goes to work whether or not it is employed
in defense of the poets or the interpretation of a myth detached from an author.
It stays true to its basic definition: it searches for a meaning that is different
from what is said. It digs below the surface, and ferrets out the underthought,
the hyponoia. It works the same way whether dealing with the physical cosmos or the microcosmos, which is the soul. Even the attempts to reduce myth
to history are a type of allegory. When interpreters use this technique, they
are claiming that the author meant something different from the surface text,
because he meant something less than what was said or written. If he says that
Cerberus is only a guard dog, he is saying that it is something different from
its mythical description. All of these varieties of allegory work on the principle of substitution. When I say that Hera is the air, Odysseus is the soul, or
Cerberus is an ordinary guard dog, I perform this operation in order to make
what I think is better sense out of something confusing or incredible. In the
process of substituting, I remove the thing replaced.
We are left with a question: was allegory the only approach to interpreting
myth? For the Greeks, it was the most commonly used, at least if allegory is
understood to include all the species of it that we have discussed. But there is,
and was, an alternative. One could follow Aristotle, shrug one’s shoulders, and
say, “Such is the tale.” All forms of allegory are directed to addressing the problem of literal truth in myth and legend. But one could counter this and assert
that the literal truth of a tale doesn’t matter; what counts is the moral message.
The argument over literal truth in poetry and the intention of the poets had
so obsessed Greek thought since the sixth century that it was very difficult to
break outside the box. But if one sees poetry as more akin to philosophy than
to history, one can derive value from its universal truths.
Aristotle laid the foundations for this approach in his Poetics. In the
Nichomachaean Ethics he built examples into his structure. The actions and
reactions of the gods and heroes of the “great myths” become prototypes of
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behaviors to be emulated or avoided. Plato had anticipated this idea; however, as he believed that the depictions of the deeds and emotions of gods and
heroes in the myths were universally objectionable, he pleaded for censorship.
But Aristotle obviously concluded that there was truth to be gleaned from bad
examples as well as good. The personae of myth (both divine and human) can
be used to exemplify instances of virtue and vice. Characters derived from
myth can be mixed indiscriminately with historical figures, as it doesn’t
matter whether the person existed or not. Aristotle cited the words given to
Homer’s goddess Calypso for avoiding extremes (N.E. 1109a)1, while the diet of
the wrestler Milo, an attested six-​time winner at the Olympic games, was used
to illustrate the idea that what is good for one person to eat is not necessarily
good for another (N.E.1106b). In discussing high-​mindedness, that is, avoiding
boasting about the favors one has done for someone, he praised the goddess
Thetis for not calling attention to the favors she had done for Zeus (Il. 1, 504),
and lauded the Spartans for mentioning the good they had received from the
Athenians while avoiding a mention of the benefits they brought to the latter.
The Spartans obviously existed and their embassies were recorded, whereas
Thetis, like Calypso, belonged to the world of myth. None of that mattered.
It is the life lessons they were said to teach that count, as shown again by the
juxtaposition of the attested politician Pithacus (seventh–​sixth century b.c.e.)
with Euripides’ mythical scions of Oedipus in the Phoenician Women (N.E.
1167a). Pithacus exemplifies concord in a state, while Eteocles and Polyneices
are examples of faction.
Most of Aristotle’s examples are drawn from specific actions or speeches
in specific contexts. So and so should be praised or blamed when he or she did
such and such. The philosopher praised the hero Philoctetes for breaking his
vow to Odysseus because the vow involved telling a lie (N.E. 1140a). Aristotle
did not praise Philoctetes in a general way or hold him up as a “type” of honesty. However, on occasion Aristotle slips into generalization, as he does with
Aphrodite:
Moreover, the more underhanded a person is, the more unjust he
is. Now a hot-​tempered man is not underhanded; nor is anger: it is
open. But appetite has the same attribute as Aphrodite, who is called
“weaver of guile on Cyprus born.”2
Similarly, arbitrariness in dealing with one’s wife and children is cited as a
general characteristic of the Cyclopes, in contrast to the orderly practice of
the Spartans, who raise their children according to laws (N.E. 1180a). Here we
have a comparison between a historically attested people and a mythical race.
The myths of the poets are vindicated. They provide immediately recognizable comparanda for evaluating the morality of human actions, be they good
or bad.
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While in the majority of cases, Aristotle validates the poet’s judgment of
his characters, he is on occasion capable of issuing censure on a poet when the
poet appears to defend an evil action by one of his characters:
There are some instances in which such actions elicit forgiveness
rather than praise, for example, when a man acts improperly under a
strain greater than human nature can bear and which no one could
endure. Yet there are perhaps also acts which no man can possibly be
compelled to do, but rather than do them he should accept the most
terrible sufferings and death. Thus the circumstances that compel
Alcmaeon in Euripides’ play to kill his own mother are patently
absurd.3
Aristotle’s tendency to treat historical and mythical personages indifferently
as examples of character types was reflected in the work of Dio Chrysostom,
a rhetorician and philosopher of the first century c.e. 4 Born in Bithynia (Asia
Minor), he was active as a rhetorician in Rome. Like Cornutus, who fell afoul
of Nero, Dio was banished from Rome by Domitian, and led the life of a wandering teacher of Stoic philosophy until rehabilitated by Nerva. His writings
consist of a series of Discourses. In his Fourth Discourse he presents a comparison of the characters of Achilles and Alexander (the Great):
Now Alexander was again hurt and vexed, for he did not care to live
at all unless he might be king of Europe, Asia, and Libya, and of any
islands that might lie in the ocean. His state of mind, you see, was
the opposite of what Homer says was that of Achilles’ ghost. For that
hero said that he preferred to live in bondage to “some man of mean
estate … rather than reign over all who have gone down to death”
(Od. 11, 490 ff.). But Alexander, I doubt not, would have chosen to die
and govern even a third part of the dead rather than become merely
a god and live forever, unless, of course, he could become king over
other gods. Perhaps, too, Zeus is the only one for whom he would
have shown no contempt, and that because men call him king.5
Today we would recognize Dio’s nice distinction as that between a proud man
who values life and freedom and a megalomaniac whose ego and ambition
know no bounds—​the total “control freak” who stops at nothing to get his
or her way. The description of Alexander’s character is simply chilling. Our
instinct is to stay out of his way at all costs.
The value of this kind of moralizing was recognized by Dio’s contemporary Plutarch. Plutarch would have been about a generation younger than
Cornutus and possibly a contemporary of Heraclitus the Younger. He was a
teacher at both Athens and Rome, and spent the last thirty years of his life as a
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priest at Delphi. We met him earlier as the biographer of Theseus who sought
to purify myths with reason (logos) so as to reduce them to plausible history.
In his Life of Theseus, Plutarch employs the methods of rationalizing criticism
discussed in c­ hapter 7, but does not use either the physical allegory favored
by the Stoics or the psychological method beloved of the Platonists. Indeed,
he tells us nothing about his attitude to allegory in that work. We learn more
about him as a critic of poetry and myth in his treatise On the Study of Poetry.
After encountering the often far-​fetched interpretations of the Stoic allegorists,
we find it refreshing to meet a critic who might be considered sane by modern
standards. Siding occasionally with Plato, more often with Aristotle, Plutarch
manages to defend poetry against its detractors without resorting to allegory.
But in the treatise cited he does not ignore the subject; indeed, as we shall see,
Plutarch is openly disdainful of that method of interpretation.6
Plutarch follows in the tracks of Plato by treating the study of literature
as a pedagogical matter. His treatise On the Study of Poetry is aimed at those
charged with teaching poetry to young men. Near the beginning he compares
poetry to drinking wine and eating: “It is nice to eat, but it results in sleep
disturbed by dreams, with confused and outlandish visions, or so they say.
Similarly with poetry: it contains much that is pleasant and profitable to the
young mind, but just as much that is confusing and misleading, if study is not
properly directed.”7 As for guarding against over-​imbibing, Plutarch recommends mixing water with the wine rather than cutting down vines: “Mixing
destroys the harm in wine, but not its usefulness. Let us not therefore cut out
or destroy the vine of the Muses.”8
Solon’s dictum “poets tell many lies” receives Plutarch’s assent. However,
some lies are deliberate, others involuntary. The deliberate lies are caused by
poets believing that truth is drier than fiction. However, more often poets
deceive themselves with their own false beliefs, “which then rub off on us.”9
They are fooled, for example, into believing that gods lay dooms of death on
scales, and that when the scale tips, the soul with the heavier doom goes down
to Hades. After presenting a series of what he regards as false and superstitious beliefs endorsed by poets, Plutarch concludes that the best way to guard
against being infected by them is to acknowledge “that poetry is not concerned
with the truth.”10 Here he stands close to Aristotle who, as we noted, was indifferent to the literal truth of myth. In defense of the poets, Plutarch invokes
Empedocles, Xenophanes, and even Socrates, to the effect that truth about
divine matters (including life after death) is unattainable.
Far from being a true description of divine truths, poetry, according to
Plutarch, should be understood as “an art of imitation, a capacity analogous to
painting.” Here we are back in familiar territory. Let us recall that both Plato
and Aristotle treated poetry as a form of mimēsis (imitation). However, the two
philosophers disagreed sharply over the meaning of mimēsis, and whether it
was good or bad. Plato believed imitation (whether poetry or painting) to be
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artificial and seriously misleading. Aristotle thought imitation to be innately
natural and good. It is the principal means by which we learn. Perhaps a bit
intimidated by his old teacher, Aristotle did not openly assert that the imitation of bad things in art was good. Plutarch was unfazed by such inhibitions.
He follows on with a compelling defense of mimēsis in both the visual arts and
poetry based on the pleasure of the recipient in recognition of the like:
Let us explain that when we see a picture of a lizard or a monkey
or Thersites’ face [a man portrayed as ugly in Il. 2, 212ff.], we feel
pleasure and admiration not because it is beautiful but because it
is like. In reality, ugliness cannot become beautiful, but imitation is
commended if it achieves likeness, whether of a good or a bad object.
Indeed, if it produces a beautiful image of an ugly thing, it fails to
provide propriety [to prepon] or probability … The young student must
be educated especially in this kind of thing, and be taught that we
praise not the action represented by the imitation but the art shown
in the appropriate reproduction of the subject.11
A potential critic of Plutarch could raise the objection that one cannot admire
the art of a poet’s description of the Olympian gods, because by Plutarch’s own
admission it is impossible to know the truth about them; hence there would
be only the “copy” without any way of verifying its likeness to the original. This
would be a valid criticism, but not completely fatal. The criterion of the fitting
would still apply to human behavior. There are enough examples of good and
bad conduct in life to enable the critic of literature to judge when a writer has
imitated them “beautifully”—​to use Plutarch’s word. Plutarch gives samples of
speeches from plays that illustrate bad character, then remarks:
All these remarks are wicked and false, but they are in character for
Eteocles, Ixion, and an old money lender. If therefore we remind our
children that the poets do not commend or approve this kind of thing
but simply attribute queer and vicious words to vicious and queer
characters, they will not be harmed by the poets’ opinion.12
Plutarch raises the objection that the punishments for wicked deeds are often
not portrayed on the stage, or are left unmentioned in the epics. He alleges
that these omissions are often the reason for allegorization of episodes. If bad
deeds are not seen being explicitly punished, then they must be explained
away. Plutarch rants against the physical allegorists, highlighting the absurdity of their interpretations:
Some critics in fact have so forced and perverted the meaning of these
[tales] by using what used to be called hyponoia and is now called
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allegory, as to interpret the revelation by Helios of Ares’ adultery with
Aphrodite as meaning that the planet Mars in conjunction with the
planet Venus produces adulterous births, which are revealed by the
return of the sun on his course to discover them; or again, to interpret
the way in which Hera beautified herself for Zeus, and the magic
of the cestus [a stitched or embroidered girdle], as symbolizing a
purification of the air coming into proximity with the fiery element.13
The second interpretation brings to mind the efforts of the Stoic cosmologists
to demythologize by desexualizing. But Plutarch’s central point is that allegory distorts and serves no useful purpose. The stories carry their own moral
lessons with them, and that is enough. The passage should also be noted
because, as far as I know, Plutarch was the first to equate the term “allegory”
with hyponoia as pertaining to interpretation rather than composition. As we
saw, Cicero classed allegory as a figure of speech, thus a literary device available to writers, while Heraclitus the Younger also saw it as belonging to composition, but added that it is a figure that signifies something different from
what is thought.
Plutarch clearly held strong reservations about allegory as a mode of
interpretation, but he did not disapprove of mixing the fables of poetry with
philosophy to make the study of philosophy easier and more attractive for
young men. As noted, the philosophical fable was well entrenched because
of Plato’s widespread use of it. Indeed, critics who thought that the past was
not very different from the present believed that the fables of the early poets
also contained philosophical truths. If Plato used fables to teach philosophy,
why should Homer not have done the same? The replacement of the old term
hyponoia (the meaning beneath) by allegoria, reported by Plutarch, brought
about the convergence of meanings of allegory as a mode of composition with
allegory as a mode of understanding. One composed allegory so that it could
be understood allegorically. One understood allegorically because one was
convinced that it was composed that way. The same convergence occurred later
with the verb “to theologize.” It could mean either to write about the gods in
some disguised way or to interpret writing about the gods as containing veiled
meanings.14
Plutarch was the clearest exponent of Aristotle’s principle of taking a
myth on its own terms. Literal truth was unimportant. The myths of the poets
contained examples of good and bad behavior that were highly valuable for the
education of the young. These examples included things to be avoided as well
as to be imitated.
However, Plutarch was not the last to espouse these notions. Basil of
Caesarea (St. Basil), who lived in the middle of the fourth century c.e.,
propounded very similar teachings to those of Plutarch.15 Although he is
known as one of the founders of eastern Christian monasticism, like many
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Greeks of his era Basil had received a thorough education in the classics. He
left behind a famous treatise entitled “Address to Young Men on How They
Might Derive Benefit from Greek Literature.” Himself a debtor to Greek
literature, he limns the debt of Moses to the Egyptians for the gift of “the
contemplation of Him who is,” and of Daniel to the Chaldeans “for their
divine teachings.”16 The Christian Basil does not seem remote from the
pagan Plutarch when he writes:
First, then, as to the learning to be derived from the poets, that I may
begin with them, inasmuch as the subjects they deal with are of every
kind, you ought not to give your attention to all they write without
exception; but whenever they recount for you the deeds or words of
good men, you ought to cherish and emulate these and try to be as far
as possible like them; but when they treat of wicked men, you ought
to avoid such imitation, stopping your ears no less than Odysseus did,
according to what those same poets say, when he avoided the songs
of the Sirens.17
Basil reveals himself as a student of Aristotle by his tacit praise of Odysseus,
who set an example of how to avoid temptation. Also like Aristotle, he got his
story mixed up (and ironically, the confusion involved Circe). Following Circe’s
advice, Odysseus commanded his crew to stuff their ears with wax while binding him tight to a mast so that he might hear the Sirens’ songs without being
physically able to succumb to them (Od. 12, 38–​60, 160–​61). But the point is
that pagan poetry provides salutary lessons for avoiding temptation and supplies role models to be followed in specific ethical situations. No less daunting
a figure than St. Augustine, who railed often and long against the evils contained in pagan poetry, selected archetypes from Greek and Roman literature
to guide him in his difficulties. Meditating on the death of his closest boyhood
friend, he wrote:
True or not, the story goes that Orestes and Pylades were ready to die
for each other’s sake, because each would rather die than live without
the other. But I doubt whether I should have been willing, as they
were, to give my life for a friend.18
The words “true or not” in this case render Augustine a catechumen under
Aristotle’s tutelage. It didn’t matter to Augustine whether Orestes and Pylades
were real or fictional. The two young heroes were embedded in his and everyone’s consciousness as the archetypes of absolute loyalty in friendship. They
were the first to come to mind when one was confronted by a parallel in one’s
own life. They provided the gnōmōn, the yardstick, by which one measured
one’s own character.
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11
From Allegory to Symbolism
As we saw in c­ hapter 5, Plato was convinced that the myths in Homer and
Hesiod’s epics could not be rendered suitable for children’s education. Allegory
was of no use. Better fables were required, so Plato set out to write them himself. Practically all of Plato’s myths dealt with the soul and its attributes. Two
dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, accorded a special place to the
soul and Eros, the great god of love. Eros, of course, had enjoyed a good run
with the cosmologists, going back to Hesiod, but the Stoic interpreters of myth
studiously avoided erotic interpretations when dealing with sexual episodes
in poetry. All was reduced to physical cosmology. Plato put Eros back in orbit,
and treated him as the sexy god he really is. He taught us that our souls can
never attain to the possession of Beauty in its pure form, if they do not first
experience the attraction to a beautiful physical form, which Eros alone makes
possible. Such is the message of the Symposium.
Centuries elapsed before any other philosopher stepped forward to use
fable as a vehicle for philosophical instruction. Plutarch, who is often grouped
with the Middle Platonists, applauded the practice of teaching philosophy
through myth. But the world of letters had to wait for a North African writing
in Latin to come forward with a new philosophical fable. The work is all the
more astonishing because it is embedded in a comic novel with the alternative title The Golden Ass. “Out of Africa always something new,” as the saying
goes, and Apuleius’s tale, “Amor and Psyche,” was and is breathtakingly new.
Indebted to Plato for its central philosophical message, it reverted to a Hesiodic
model of allegory, leapfrogging over the parable-​type of fable that Plato produced, and embracing old-​style personification. Had Apuleius stopped there,
his work would have ended in failure. We can only imagine a yawn-​inducing,
expanded version of “Heracles at the Crossroads,” or a Platonic recasting of
the Psychomachia (“Battle for Mansoul”), easily the best soporific on the market before the invention of barbiturates. The characters that populate “Amor
and Psyche” may be symbolic, but they are not made of cardboard. Amor is
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indeed Love personified, but he is motivated by instincts that are anything
but abstract. He behaves like any teenaged boy who likes to indulge in sex but
is still afraid of being caught by his mother. Psyche is Soul, but like any teenaged girl, Psyche responds to her situation with a mixture of excitement and
apprehension. Moreover, she is gullible, naïve in every way, and flawed. Twice
she is nearly undone by her curiosity. Apuleius makes us think of Pandora’s
Box when Psyche opens a vial of Hades’ perfume, which she was forbidden to
sense.
If one did not know better, one would think that Apuleius had read
Cinderella and Snow White, or at least had seen the movies. Venus begins as
the haughty queen of Snow White and morphs into the cruel stepmother of
Cinderella. Amor is the prince whom three sisters want to marry, but only
Psyche succeeds in gaining. Psyche is saved from a bad fate by Amor, just as
Snow White is saved from the Queen’s appointed assassins, but the girl later
undergoes Cinderella’s fate as a char in the house of her stepmother. While
there is little or no comedy in modern fairy tales, “Amor and Psyche” is full of
ironic wit. Amor forbids Psyche to know his godlike identity not for mystical
reasons, but because he is afraid Psyche will tattle, and he will be scolded and
grounded by his mother for disobeying her orders. And if pathos is wanted,
what could be more heart-​rending than the tale of a beautiful girl ordered to be
wedded to Death by the oracle of Apollo?
The tale begins with the widespread recognition of Psyche’s exceptional
beauty—​such that she is treated as a goddess and the rites of Venus are
neglected. Venus realizes that she has been surpassed in beauty by a mortal
girl and flies into a rage. She orders Psyche to be inflamed with passion and
married to a man of low estate; she tasks her son Amor to work his usual
mischief with the girl. Psyche meanwhile is driven to despair. Her sisters have
already married, but no suitor can be found for her because her godlike beauty
renders her untouchable. She laments her state to her father, who consults
the oracle of Apollo. The oracle orders that Psyche be wedded to Death. She
is led by a wedding-​funeral procession to the crag from which she must leap.
But Psyche does not die. She wakes up in a lovely place and enters a beautiful palace, where she is treated as the mistress and receives every service she
could wish for. Needless to say, tricky Amor was behind all this. His mother
had shown him Psyche’s outstanding beauty and he wanted her for himself.
He came to her at night in the palace and immediately “made her his wife.”
Psyche can sense her “husband” in every way except by sight; she cannot know
his identity. In the morning an invisible Amor advises her sternly not to make
contact with her sisters, for they will cause her destruction. But Psyche grows
lonely, as she is left by herself all day. She prevails upon Amor to let her sisters
visit. The sisters, riven with envy, inveigle Psyche to admit she does not know
her husband’s identity. They make her think that her spouse may be a monster
and urge her to kill him in his sleep. Persuaded by her sisters, Psyche waits
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for Amor to fall asleep, then, holding a razor in her hand, lights a lamp to get
a good look at him. Alas, hot wax drips down from the lamp on to the god’s
face; he wakes and flees to his mother’s bedchamber to assuage the burn he
has suffered.
Meanwhile, a little bird has told Venus, who is not at home, all about what
her darling son has been up to. Infuriated, she makes a beeline for her palace, finds her rascal son, gives him a good piece of her mind, and grounds
him. Then she heads out to find Psyche. Psyche had discovered her husband’s
identity from the bow and arrows the god left behind in his haste. One of
the arrows pricked her finger, which ensured that she would fall desperately
in love with Love. Despairing over her loss, she manages to get home and
tell her sad story to her sisters. The sisters can barely conceal their glee and,
assuming that Love is single again, go severally to the crag where Psyche first
leapt. Thinking they would be wafted across the chasm to Amor’s bower, they
fall to their deaths. Venus, tiring of searching for Psyche, enlists the help of
her father, Jupiter, who sends Mercury on the errand. Psyche, knowing she is
being hunted down, surrenders to Venus.
The vindictive goddess sets the girl four tasks, the last of which requires
a trip to Hades to bring back a vial of Venus’s favorite perfume. Psyche
encounters great dangers in the process, but succeeds in performing them
all. However, on her way back from Hades she is overcome by curiosity, opens
the vial, and immediately falls into a deathlike swoon. Amor, desperate to be
reunited with Psyche, escapes from his room through a window, finds Psyche,
and revives her in the nick of time. Psyche takes the vial to Venus, while Amor
flies to heaven to enlist the aid of Jupiter. After making a comical speech blaming Amor for all his adulteries, Jupiter assents, calls an assembly of the gods,
and proclaims the union of Amor and Psyche. Psyche is made immortal and
joined to Amor in eternal union.
A wonderful story, you will say, but where is the allegory? True, Apuleius
has composed a fable that is far longer and more complex than any of the fables
composed by Plato. It incorporates many elements of the fairy tale, or Märchen,
including hateful sisters and a cruel stepmother (mother-​in-​law in this story).
It also features a handful of ordinary human beings, such as Psyche’s parents
and sisters. Its mystical content is obfuscated by comic episodes, nor can one
overlook the fact that the tale is told by an aged crone who cooks for bandits.
To lower the tone even further, the author himself labeled it a “Milesian tale,”
a genre of stories of sexual adventures, allegedly originating in Miletus. This
disconnect in register was jarring to ancient critics, though far less so to modern sensibilities inured to bizarre intrusions of foreign register and genre. The
fact remains that the story is about a god named Love and a mortal girl named
Soul who end up united for all time. Love achieves his aim, which is the possession of beauty. Soul, who suffers near-​death experiences, regains her wings
and immortality through love. The only obstacle to this reading is the very last
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sentence, where we learn that their immortal child is a girl called Pleasure.
With that, Apuleius reminds us that his tale is Milesian—​the genre demands
an ironic ending.
Written by a Platonist writer,1 the work references Plato’s core teachings on
love and soul. Love is incomplete without the possession of beauty; soul grows
her wings through love. For an example of the first, let us look at what Plato
had to say in the Symposium:
Socrates: Now we have agreed that Love is in love with what he lacks and
does not possess.
Agathon: Yes.
Socrates: So after all Love lacks and does not possess beauty?
Agathon: Inevitably.
Socrates: Well, then, would you call what lacks and in no way possesses
beauty beautiful?
Agathon: Certainly not.
Socrates: Do you think then that Love is beautiful, if this is so?
Agathon: It looks, Socrates, as if I didn’t know what I was talking about
when I said that.
Socrates: Still, it was a beautiful speech, Agathon. But there is just one
more small point. Do you think that what is good is the same as what is
beautiful?
Agathon: I do.
Socrates: Then, if love lacks beauty, and what is good coincides with what is
beautiful, he also lacks goodness.
Agathon: I can’t find any way of withstanding you, Socrates. Let it be as
you say.2
To be sure, Apuleius left no autobiography behind to tell us that he was leafing
through the Symposium when a voice told him to “take and read” as he scrolled
down to this passage. Such evidence from antiquity turns up but rarely.3 But
the passage is surely a text that Apuleius would have known, and could have
served as his inspiration. Similarly, a passage from the Phaedrus may have
been a catalyst for his allegory4 of Soul:
Next, with the passing of the shudder, a strange sweating fever seizes
him: for by reason of the stream of beauty entering through his eyes
there comes a warmth, whereby his soul’s plumage is fostered; and
with that warmth the roots of the wings are melted, which for long
had been so hardened and closed up that nothing could grow; then
as the nourishment is poured in, the stump of the wing swells and
hastens to grow from the root over the whole substance of the soul: for
aforetime the whole soul was furnished with wings.5
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In a similar vein, the sisters’ fall to their deaths may be explained as the unfitness of their souls’ wings for flight. They are driven by lust rather than the
longing for divine Love. Hear again what Plato had to say in the Phaedrus, a
dialogue on love and the soul:
The natural property of a wing is to raise that which is heavy and
carry it aloft to the region where the gods dwell; and more than any
other bodily part it shares in the divine nature, which is fair, wise
and good, and possessed of all other such excellences. Now by these
excellences the soul’s plumage is nourished and fostered, while by
their opposites, even by ugliness and evil, it is wasted and destroyed.6
Psyche’s descent into the underworld is another element that warrants Platonic
exegesis. In Plato’s “Myth of Er” the underworld is where the reincarnation of
souls condemned to rebirth, or the release of purified souls, begins. Psyche
returns to the upper air not yet purified, for she falls victim again to her curiosity and opens Proserpina’s vial of perfume intended for Venus. She experiences death or something akin to it, and can be saved only by an adventitious
rescue by Amor, who has broken free from his imprisonment. Apuleius has
composed the ideal psychological allegory, with Psyche (Soul) herself as the
subject. But he has also given the world a tale that is touchingly beautiful and
richly comic. The work is true to Plato, and despite its fairy-​tale aspect, true to
life. Love does indeed save the soul from death.
The personifications in “Amor and Psyche” belong to the psychological
or noetic world. From the beginning, personified abstractions were at the
heart of composed allegories. Invariably, these represent persons and things
that have no concrete existence. They are forces we know from their effects
without being able to sense them as corporeal beings. They include virtue
and vice, every kind of emotion (love, fear, panic—​c hildren of Ares and
Aphrodite), law and justice (both gods in their own right), and the soul and
mind themselves. As we saw in c­ hapter 6, Zeus, an anthropomorphic god,
“married” Metis (Counsel), then swallowed her in order to keep wisdom to
himself. He also “married” two of his aunts, Themis (Law) and Mnemosyne
(Memory). It is a partial truth that personification is the opposite of allegory
on the grounds that personifications are self-​e xplanatory, whereas allegory
entails some concealed second meaning. But personified abstractions are
not real people. You don’t see Faith standing on the street giving Reason a
piece of her mind. Personifications, then, are metaphors for concepts in the
mind, or they symbolize virtues (or vices) in the soul, so in that sense they
do entail two levels of meaning. Apuleius mimetically represented the Soul
itself in the character of Psyche. Psyche is both a beautiful teenaged girl
and the Soul. He also enlisted gods as personifications of particular attributes. Ceres (bread), for example, refuses to come to Psyche’s aid because of
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her loyalty to Venus, giving a nod to the proverb “Without Ceres … Venus
grows cold.”
By contrast, the great phenomena of the cosmos, which appear as anthropomorphic gods, are rarely personified as characters in a myth (Hesiod’s Gaia
is an exception). Earth, Air, Fire, and Water do not populate stories, though the
gods who represent them (for example, Zeus as aether, Hera as air, Hephaestus
as fire) do. Because composed allegories introduce characters drawn from the
noetic world (the world that can be experienced only by the mind), they remain
attached—​strongly or loosely—​to Platonism. When interpreting, Platonists
focus on those aspects of myths that evoke the noetic world, the things of
the mind; when writing, they do the same. Belief in the close relationship
between the intent of the composer and the interpretation of the critic remains
consistent throughout the history of Platonism after Plato. The poets allegedly
intended to portray truths about the noetic world under the guise of myth. This
is most apparent in Neoplatonism, the latest phase of Platonism (beginning
in the third century c.e.). The Neoplatonists were convinced that poetry concealed the deepest truths of metaphysics in symbolic form and devoted much
of their writing to uncovering what was concealed.7
One of the most famous pieces of Neoplatonist exegesis still intact is
Porphyry’s essay on Homer’s “Cave of the Nymphs,” which appears in Book 13
of the Odyssey. Let’s begin with Homer’s text:
And at the head of the harbor is a slender-​leaved olive
and nearby it a lovely and murky cave
sacred to the nymphs called Naiads.
Within are kraters and amphoras
of stone, where bees lay up stores of honey.
Inside, too, are massive stone looms and there the nymphs
weave sea-​purple cloth, a wonder to see.
The water flows unceasingly. The cave has two gates,
the one from the north, a path for men to descend,
while the other, toward the south, is divine. Men do not
enter by this one, but it is rather a path for immortals.8
The only divine figures that appear in this passage are the nymphs called
Naiads. The rest of the passage consists in the description of the cave, the
objects in it and near to it, and its two entrances. In choosing the passage,
Porphyry embarks into new territory. He concentrates on the symbolism of
things rather than people (whether divine or human). In doing so, he must
incorporate objects that belong to the world of the senses as well as the noetic
world of the gods. He exploits these objects as a way of discussing, in symbolic
terms, the doctrine of his teacher Plotinus on the relation of matter and soul,
and the fall of the soul into matter:
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Matter is an existing thing. Soul is an existing thing. They occupy, as
it were, one place. There is no place of Matter distinct from the place
of Soul; thus, Matter is not confined to earth and Soul to air. Yet Soul
has its place apart in this sense, that it is not in Matter, that is, it is not
united to Matter; that is, no unity is produced out of Soul and Matter;
that is, Soul does not arise in Matter as in a subject. That is the Soul’s
apartness.9
Plotinus, like Plato before him, felt obliged to confront the problem of how soul
and matter are related:
This entry into Matter is the Fall of the Soul; this, and the weakness
which ensues because Matter, invading the Soul’s domain, and as
it were forcing her to narrower bounds, does not permit all her
powers to be actualized, but filches away a part and makes it evil,
until it have strength again to escape upwards. Matter is thus the
cause both of the soul’s weakness and of her vice.10
However one deals with the difficulty of compressing something that cannot
be measured into a physical space, the contamination of the soul by matter is
a central Neoplatonic dogma: “Matter invades the Soul’s domain.” The two
do get mixed up, much to the disadvantage of soul. And even if “Soul is not
confined to air,” air is nevertheless the place where soul wants to go—​it is her
natural habitat. Porphyry, in his exegesis, does not “wish away” all the material aspects of the cave, or treat them all as symbols of the noetic world, but
gives each its proper place. At the same time, he follows his teacher in seeing
matter as somehow corrupting. Those who are reborn into a body are unfortunate in comparison with the pure souls who free themselves forever from
bodily influence.
Porphyry begins with an interpretation of the cave itself: “Not only did
they [the theologians] make the cave a symbol of the generated and perceptible cosmos, but likewise the ancients took it as a symbol of all the unseen
powers11 … That the theologians made caves symbols of the cosmos and of
the encosmic powers has been demonstrated, but it has also been asserted
that they made them symbols of the noetic substance … They made them
symbols of the cosmos because they are dark and rocky and damp … they
made them symbols of the noetic universe, on the other hand, because they
are not easily grasped by the senses.”12 Thus, for different reasons, the cave
can symbolize both worlds, and Pophyry is intent on showing their relationship to each other.
By resorting to the term “symbol” (symbolon) Porphyry is using a mode
of interpretation that differs from that of the early physical allegorists and
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the Stoics. In the strict sense, allegory operates like a code involving a substitution: When I say “Hera,” I really mean “air,” not some goddess real or
imagined; or, when I say “Kronos,” I really mean “time,” not some monstrous
being with a scythe. We have to delete the files of Hera and Kronos and save
those of Air and Time. To do otherwise would be to insult Homer or Hesiod’s
intelligence. However, Porphyry does not understand Homer’s cave as a substitute for the cosmos; rather, because of certain qualities, it suggests, hints at,
or points to some characteristics of now the sensible universe, now the noetic
world. The difference between the two types of interpretation can be underscored by inserting the word “only” before the intended meaning. A strict allegorist like Heraclitus the Younger would say, “When I say ‘arrows of Apollo’,
I mean only ‘the rays of the sun.’ ” Porphyry would be inclined to put it, “The
arrows of Apollo make us think of the rays of the sun.” Allegory is a species
of metaphor, as Cicero following Aristotle taught, while symbolic language is
akin to simile.
Porphyry then skillfully connects the dampness of caves that symbolizes
their material aspect to the central Neoplatonic idea that matter is the cause of
the weakening of souls:
There is a compulsion for souls, whether they are embodied or
disembodied but still dragging along some corporeal material—​and
most of all for those souls that are just about to be bound to blood
and moist bodies—​to descend to moisture and, once they have been
moistened, to become embodied.13
He summons to his aid Heraclitus the Elder, who claimed that “dry souls are
the wisest,” arguing that “in this world the spirit becomes damp or saturated
as a function of its sexual desire, and the soul drags a damp vapor along with it
from its descent toward genesis.”14 The souls coming into genesis are symbolized by the Naiad nymphs.
The olive tree mentioned in the first line of Homer’s text is kept to the
last. Porphyry’s exegesis combines the conventional association of the olive
tree with Athena, moves to thoughtfulness (via the goddess’s birth from the
head of Zeus), and from there to the function of the tree in Homer’s account
refashioned as Platonic fable:
The olive tree belongs to Athena and Athena is thoughtfulness. In view
of the fact that Athena was born from the head [of Zeus] the theologian
[i.e., Homer] found an appropriate place, when he enshrined the tree
at the “head” of the harbor and he indicated through the tree the fact
that the universe did not come to be spontaneously nor was it the work
of irrational chance, but rather that it is the result of noetic nature and
of wisdom. At the same time, the tree is something separate from the
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cave [as divine wisdom is something separate from the world], but set
nearby at the head of the entire harbor.15
By emphasizing the separateness of the olive tree and interpreting it as a symbol of the noetic world, Porphyry references Plotinus’s dictum “matter is an
existing thing. Soul is an existing thing. They occupy, as it were, one place.”
“One place,” because the tree is at the “head” of the harbor and nearby to the
cave. They are separate, but connected.
There are other fascinating aspects of Porphyry’s interpretative essay, but
perhaps we should concentrate on what Porphyry has to say on interpretation
itself. At the very end of the essay he writes a short defense of his method:
This sort of exegesis should not be considered forced, nor should it
be equated with the sort of thing fanciful interpreters try to render
plausible. When one takes into consideration the ancient wisdom and
vast intelligence of Homer, along with his perfection in every virtue,
one cannot reject the idea that he has hinted at images of more divine
things in molding his little story. It is impossible that he should have
successfully created the entire basis of the story without shaping that
creation after some sort of truth.16
The first sentence of Porphyry’s defense is a shot across the bow at the enemies
of allegory, at least allegory as defined by certain Neoplatonists. It is possible
that when he wrote this, Porphyry had Plutarch in mind. As we saw above,
Plutarch had taunted the allegorists in his On Teaching Poetry.
Strictly speaking, Porphyry was not an allegorist in the sense of the term
used up to this point. All the same, meanings detected by the symbolist interpreter must bear some relation to the meaning in the mind of the author,
though, at least for Porphyry, the relation need not be exact. Porphyry’s allegiance to the language of symbolism forbids any single interpretation. Homer
“hints at images of more divine things,” but he does not use myth to conceal
philosophical truth. There is no imputed substitution.17 For that reason the
language of symbolism does not need etymology for support. While etymologies involve our sense of hearing, symbolic language entails our sense of
sight. We see with the eye of the mind the resemblance between a concept
of the mind and an object in nature. A cave with two entrances can express
the dichotomy between the noetic and material worlds,18 just as the sun can
express the idea of the good (the sun illuminates the physical cosmos, while
the good illuminates the universe of forms).
Porphyry’s technique in his exegesis of the “Cave of the Nymphs” is
worth a little more scrutiny. He extracts a description from Homer and
lays out a literary canvas that can be called a tableau. He asks us to look at
a particular cave and the objects in it and near it. He wants us to relate one
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object to another, to see connections. Other writers, in a way, did this, too,
when they described paintings and statues, as Philostratus did in his work
The Images. Cornutus accomplished something similar when he described
the attributes of the goddess Rhea, and the North African writer Martianus
Capella followed suit when he described in detail the appearance and accessories of the female figures who represented the liberal arts. Porphyry asks
us to look at the objects in the tableau as symbols of the physical cosmos
and of the life of souls, and succeeds in this, even if he does not convince us
today, that these symbols were in Homer’s mind. Porphyry skillfully draws
his symbols from Neoplatonic doctrine and embeds them in a Homeric
framework.
Porphyry’s technique of laying out a grand tableau for the eye, then taking the viewer through the objects and persons depicted one by one, was not
original. It was anticipated by a work that was once very popular, now rarely
read. This is the Tabula Cebetis (“Tableau of Cebes”), a Greek work of uncertain
date, but known and cited before Porphyry’s time. The historical Cebes was a
disciple of Socrates who was allegedly present at his execution, but it is more
than doubtful that it was that Cebes who was responsible for the work. There
is almost nothing by way of a plot; all is description. Two visitors to the temple
of Cronus (Kronos) come across an unusual painting in front of the shrine of
the god. They find the fables depicted in it mystifying. A guide comes along to
serve as an interpreter and take them through the images in the tablet:
We happened to be strolling in the temple of Cronus, looking at the
many different votive offerings in it. In front of the shrine was set
up a tablet, on which there was an unusual painting with peculiar
fables, and we were not able to make out what they could possibly be.
For what was depicted seemed to us to be neither a walled city nor a
military camp; it was, rather a circular enclosure having within itself
two other circular enclosures, one larger and one smaller. There was
also a gate in the first enclosure … Then, while we were questioning
one another at length as to the meaning of the fable, an old man
who was attending nearby said, “If you have any questions about this
picture, O strangers, your reaction is not unusual.”19
There are, of course, very important differences between the Tabula and
“The Cave of the Nymphs.” Porphyry finds his material in Homer, while the
“Tabulist” invents his own. Porphyry has chosen a passage that is a description
of things; the “Tabulist” populates his painting with people, personifications of
the vices and virtues. Porphyry’s investigation is, one might say, metaphysical: an exploration into the nature of things. The “Tabulist” is essentially a
moralist; his self-​interpreting personifications are all related to the question
of the good life.
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What unites the two images is their static quality. There is no real movement in either of these tableaux. Although people mill about and come and
go in the Tabula, nothing really happens. What the “Tabulist” calls a fable
(mythos) is nothing more than a landscape with objects and people in it. The
same can be said of Homer’s description of the Cave of the Nymphs. The two
verbal images can be translated into visual art, with the objects and people in
them transposed into the subjects of iconography. Iconography requires that
the image depicted and the interpretation be inseparable. They belong to a
single intuition. The symbolist mode thus relies on the continued presence
of the symbol. We need the symbol constantly before us in order to perceive
what it means with the eye of the mind. Nothing is substituted for anything
else, because there is nothing false in the symbol that needs to be erased or
replaced. We can look at a statue of Zeus with his lightning rod without thinking that it is only natural fire we are seeing and wishing the statue away. For
we must look at the statue carefully—​and for a long time—​to see how it is connected to its meaning or meanings. Returning to Apuleius’s use of imagery,
we see the adolescent girl named Psyche and psyche at the same time.
Plato’s own fables are best interpreted through the symbolist mode. The
fables he makes up are not properly called myths, because nothing really happens in them. His famous cave is a tableau laid out for study in the same way
that Porphyry conceived of Homer’s. We are asked to look at the walls of the
cave, the fire, the shadows, and the people; then we are asked to look at the sun.
The people in the fable do nothing more than look; they do not act. The same
can be said of Plato’s allegory of the soul in the Phaedrus. The soul is compared
to a chariot, with a charioteer and a pair of steeds. “One of the steeds is noble
and of good stock, while the other has the opposite character, and his stock is
opposite. Hence the task of our charioteer is difficult and troublesome.”20 The
charioteer is, of course, the governing part of the soul, while the horses represent our immortal and mortal natures in a struggle with each other, one lifting us upward to immortality, the other dragging us down into the continuing
cycle of rebirth. But nothing happens—​certainly nothing as interesting, say,
as Phaethon falling out of the sky with the chariot of the sun. As a journalist
might say, “There is no story there.” I think that C. S. Lewis’s characterization
of symbolist thought can be applied to Plato’s fables: they do indeed “work
from the given to find what is more real.”21 For Plato and Platonists, the soul is
more real than a chariot, and the good is more real than the sun. The soul is
more real than the girl named Psyche.
It is hardly any wonder, then, that the few composed allegories surviving from antiquity have souls as their subject. One can interpret an existing
myth as a struggle between the elements, but it is hard to make up a new
story about that subject (admittedly possible, but would anyone want to read
it?). To have a true myth, the characters must act. Here we face a serious
limitation on the range of possibilities. Unlike a story about people in real
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life, where action can take many forms, souls are able to do much less.
According to Angus Fletcher, whose book on allegory remains authoritative, there are only two patterns of action: “The two may be labeled battle
and progress.”22 I would add, however, a third: sexual union and/​or marriage. While the progress of Soul (Psyche) certainly is central to “Amor and
Psyche,” the tale culminates in the marriage of the pair, fulfilling love’s
longing for the good and the beautiful.
The last full-​scale allegory to be composed in antiquity is also about a
marriage. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury was written in Latin by
another North African, Martianus Capella, at some time in the fifth century
c.e.23 The heroine, Philology, is a maiden who represents erudition; indeed,
her knowledge embraces the entirety of the seven liberal arts. Mercury, her
husband-​to-​be, is the god of wit and fluent speech, but lacking the gravitas
of real learning. Each partner needs the other to be complete. It is a marriage made in heaven, as we are later to learn. Although the main part of
the work is an encyclopedia of the liberal arts, the title is drawn from the
first two books, ostensibly an introduction to the textbook that follows, but
in fact a freestanding allegory. It is impossible to do justice to the outrageous farrago of gods, virtues and vices, academic disciplines, and philosophers who appear as characters in Martianus’s book. C. S. Lewis justly
compares the work to a curiosity shop.24 It is composed in the symbolist
mode, with descriptions of persons and things abounding everywhere. As
Philology progresses through the spheres in preparation for her marriage,
she enters the circle of the moon. In the light reflected by the moon there
appeared “the sistra of Egypt, the lamp of Eleusis, Diana’s bow, and the
tambours of Cybele”25—​a ll attributes of goddesses and mysteries associated
with the night and the moon. Very few characters enter the tale without a
full description of their attributes:
There came also a girl of great beauty and of extreme modesty, the
guardian and protectress of the Cyllenian home, by name Themis
or Astraea or Erigone; she carried in her hand stalks of grain and an
ebony tablet engraved with this image: in the middle of it was that
bird of Egypt which the Egyptians call an ibis. It was wearing a broad-​
brimmed hat, and it had a most beautiful head and mouth, which was
being caressed by a pair of serpents entwined… .26
That is hardly the end of the ecphrasis; more animals are tossed into the potpourri. Unlike Cornutus, Martianus does not explain these attributes with
their symbols. He expects us to know them. His is a book dedicated to pedants
everywhere—​a call for them to unite and throw off their chains! Sometimes
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his bookishness dissolves into parody and invites us to chuckle. Philology’s
meeting with Venus (who is both a planet and a goddess, following the
Timaeus) is a trifle strained, given Philology’s virginity and Venus’s reputation. But though the encounter goes well, Philology can’t hold her girlish cattiness in check: “She is said to have perceived in Venus that, fair though she
was, she had her forelocks curled about with snakes and her thick hair flowing loosely.”27 Here we see allegorical writing deftly leavened with a dash of
mimēsis. The symbols of Venus’s wicked, wicked ways are set in plain view,
and Philology shows that she is just a normal girl in calling attention to them.
We catch a whiff of the divine Apuleius.
Before Philology can be granted immortality and begin her journey through the spheres, she is compelled to undergo a vomiting ritual!
Immortality herself, described as “a woman of reverend countenance, shining with holy and celestial light in all the dignity of a priestess,” discovered that Philology’s breast was greatly swollen, and ordered her “to void
this matter which is choking your breast.”28 But Philology, virginity intact,
is not suffering from morning sickness. No, her stomach is overburdened
with books, and it is these she vomits up—​myriads of them. Here is what
transpired:
But while the maiden was bringing up such matter in spasms, several
young women, of whom some are called the Arts, and others the
Disciplines, were straightway collecting whatever the maiden brought
forth from her mouth, each one of them taking material for her own
essential use and her particular skill. Even the Muses themselves,
especially Urania and Calliope, gathered countless volumes into their
laps. In some of these books the pages were marked with musical notation
and were very long, in others there were circles and straight lines and
hemispheres, together with triangles and squares and polygonal shapes
drawn to suit the different theorems and elements; then a representation
joined together the limbs of various animals into a particular species.
There were also books which continued the harmonies of music and the
notations of rhythms and some pieces for singing.29
Here we have a transparent allegory of the origin of the liberal arts. Philology
(Erudition) vomits the books of the arts and disciplines, which are gathered by
the Arts and Disciplines. Each of these maidens will make an appearance in
Martianus’s book and expound on the material she has collected for herself.
Grammatica will recite grammar, Rhetorica rhetoric, and so on. Martianus
has managed simultaneously to introduce his encyclopedia and to serve the
tale of Philology. Because Philology is about to join the ranks of the gods, she
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will no longer need her books. The gods know all things intuitively; it is only
mortals who must learn by reading.
The allegorical books of the Marriage end with Philology drinking the cup
of immortality, her journey through the spheres, and the beginning of the ceremony of her wedding to Mercury (Wisdom). Martianus borrows two motifs from
“Amor and Psyche”: the proffering of the cup of immortality and the approval of
the marriage by Jupiter and the senate of the gods (the story is, after all, Roman).
But another allusion to Apuleius’s tale brings us back to the central soul fable,
the union of Amor and Psyche. In Martianus’s tale of Mercury’s search for a
bride, the god has set his heart on the beautiful Psyche, only to find to his sorrow
that she has already been snatched away by Amor, who bound her in shackles
of adamant (a riff on the myth of Zeus shackling Hera?). The choice settles on
Philology. Juno is convinced that the girl will be good for her gadabout nephew,
as she will keep him awake at night, teaching him all the facts he needs to know.
Just as Apuleius knew Plato’s truth that Love finds its completion in Soul, the sly
Martianus was aware that the god who represented the gift of gab required more
than a dollop of hard data to be complete. Philology followed Psyche into the
empyrion, was made immortal, and enjoyed an eternal union with her divine
mate. Martianus’s clunkily droll allegory of the noetic world found its inspiration in Apuleius’s beautiful and comic tale. Martianus interpreted Apuleius’s
psychological allegory and fashioned a new one out of it.
One final representative of symbolist exegesis will claim our attention.
This is the Neoplatonist Proclus (410 c.e.?–​485). Born in Lycia (southern Asia
Minor) and educated at Alexandria, Proclus spent the greatest part of his life
(430–​485 c.e.) in Athens, as the Academy neared its last years of existence.
Influenced by Porphyry, Proclus devoted a great deal of scholary attention to
developing a poetic and a symbolic exegesis of mythology, most notably in his
fifth and sixth books of his Commentary on Plato’s Republic, which survive, and
in his lost “On the Symbols of Myth.”30 David Konstan refers to his method as
“psychagogic, leading the mind on to intuitions of higher reality.”31
Movement from lower levels of meaning to higher is reflected in Proclus’s
tripartite division of poetry with soul functions appropriate to each, that is,
each level is equated with a level of knowledge.32 At the third, or lowest, level
are myths that are mimetic, operating at the level of doxa (opinion). There are
two divisions of this level, the lower being illusion (the phantastikon), where
there are descriptions of things that seem to be, based on aphomoiōsis, “resemblance.” A mythic example is Homer’s description of the sun rising out of
the sea (Od. 3, 1). The higher subdivision is the mimetic, also operating at
the level of doxa, but with a greater claim to accuracy, in which descriptions
are representational (eikastikon). Mythic examples include warriors fighting or
otherwise behaving in character. The second, or middle level, which is non-​
mimetic, is graspable through epistēmē (true knowledge), in which soul turns
inward and focuses on mind (nous). An example is the description of Heracles
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in the underworld (Od. 11, 601–​4). These lines, marked as spurious by editors,
tell us that it was only an image (eidōlon) of Heracles that Odysseus recognized
in Hades, as the hero’s true self was feasting with the gods, wedded to the goddess Hebe. The questionable lines would doubtless have held a deep appeal for
Proclus, lauding Homer for demonstrating that “the true being of Heracles is
in his soul, while the ‘image’ attached to the soul should be considered a ’tool’
(organon) of Heracles that bears a resemblance to him but is not he himself
[Commentary, pp. 247–​49].”
The third level is difficult to describe, as it introduces a level of mysticism
that we have not encountered thus far in this study. Proclus envisions the soul
on the level of the gods, “transcending,” to quote Lamberton, “individual mind
(nous) and attaching its ‘own light to the transcendent light … to the One
beyond all being and life’ (Commentary., p. 257).” This level of poetry appears
to operate beyond epistēmē and involves the fusion of subject and object. It is
created through inspiration or possession by the Muses. Here Proclus invokes
Plato’s theory of poetry advanced in the Phaedrus (245a), which uses words like
“possession,” “madness,” and “frenzy.” In Proclus’s words, these are what “fills
the soul with symmetry.” The poet abandons every form of representation or
imitation, and turns to symbols. Proclus’s example is the myth of the sexual
encounter of Ares and Aphrodite and the chains of Hephaestus, for which he
provides a detailed exegesis involving the Neoplatonic treatment of the monad
and the dyad. (In Rep., pp. 193–​99).
Proclus does not engage in substitutions and does not always explain the
specific meanings of symbols. Even the interpretations of individual myths are
only of interest insofar as they lead to a higher understanding of poetry and the
nature of divinity. Indeed, the individual myths about the gods that are treated
as separate events in the poems belie the fact that for the gods, all phenomena occur simultaneously. In his Commentary on the Republic Proclus wrote,
“For these things that exist simultaneously [for the gods] with one another the
mythoplasts have separated, disguising the truth.”33 Proclus went on to say:
[The mythoplasts] fashion likenesses of the indivisible by way of
division, of the eternal by what moves in time, of the noetic by the
perceptible; they represent the immaterial by the material, what is
without extension by way of discontinuity, and that which is steadfastly
established through change.34
Proclus has embraced the symbolic mode and turned Plato on his head. Myth
and poetry (for they are one) do not remove us from the divine; they connect
us to divinity through symbols—​to use the language of St. Paul—​“as through
a glass darkly” (I Cor. 13:12). Like Porphyry before him, he lays out a tableau
and selects from it the warring images of time and generation and the still
symbols of eternity.
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Greek Exegesis
and Judaeo-​Christian Books
“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” “What has the academy to do with
the Church?” We can imagine these words thundered from a pulpit and punctuated with lightning bolts in place of question marks. In fact, the words are
to be found in a work entitled On the Proscribing of Heretics (7.9) written by
Tertullian, a Christian polemicist resident in Carthage in the late second to
early third century. The same writer expressed his distrust of Greek philosophy in various writings; he preferred to rely solely on the authority of the Bible.
The notion that there was no meeting of the minds between Christians and
pagan thinkers was also accepted by a number of pagans, notably Celsus, who
wrote a comprehensive treatise entitled Against Christianity.
As we noted in c­ hapter 3, a parallel dichotomy between the intellectual
cultures of Greeks and Jews had been posited by Galen, the famous medical
writer. For Galen, the all-​important difference could be reduced to the answers
given to the question of what it was possible for God to do in a universe governed by natural laws. Jews and Greeks, apparently, held irreconcilably diverse
opinions on the subject. If we were to accept the views of writers such as
Tertullian, Celsus, and Galen as representative of social reality, we would conclude that pagans, Christians, and Jews lived in walled intellectual ghettos.
The truth of the matter was far different. Except for rigorist sects, pagans,
Christians, and Jews all read one another’s writings. Celsus may have strongly
disliked Christianity, but he knew its scriptures.1 The same can be said of the
Neoplatonists who flourished from the latter third to sixth century c.e. One
might be surprised to learn how often Plotinus and Porphyry, the founding
fathers of Neoplatonism, quote Christian scripture. Their writings, in turn,
were absorbed by Christian thinkers in both the Greek-​and Latin-​speaking
parts of the empire.2
Pagans and Christians shared a single world. They may not have participated in the same rituals, but they read the same books. They read the same
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books because they went to the same schools. Until the fourth century c.e.
their teachers were invariably pagans. From the fourth century c.e. Christians
were allowed to teach in state schools, and the trend persisted despite the
attempt of the Emperor Julian (361–​363 c.e.) to bar them. However, even after
the introduction of Christian teachers, schools throughout the Roman Empire
remained under state control. Christian education, apart from private tutoring, never gained a footing—​even in the fifth and sixth centuries, by which
time all forms of pagan practice had been made illegal. But the curriculum
remained more or less static over the centuries. The books on the syllabus,
all pagan works, stayed the same. Students wishing to study the Bible were
directed to their churches or synagogues. In the Middle Ages, when the Bible
finally took the central place in the curriculum, Christian students in the East
continued to read their Homer, while Christian students in the West read
Vergil (and not only in Ireland!).
There were fairly large areas of intellectual concord between the two
groups, certainly on the philosophical level. Christians early on recognized
similarities between Plato’s teachings and their own. Timaean Platonism gave
Christians a god/​God who created the world. This god was both outside the
world and present in it through the world soul. This same god wanted to share
his happiness, and to do that made the world as nearly perfect as possible.
Plato also bequeathed the notion of the immortal soul (though for Plato the
soul was not simply immortal, but also eternal). Christians wedded the notion
of the immortality of a spiritual soul to their own teaching of the resurrection
of the body, a concept that they had inherited from the intertestamental Jews.
Christians also felt a kinship with the Stoics on many points. Above all, the
Stoics bequeathed the idea that virtue is the highest good; it is the very purpose of life. And, of course, Christians shared with Platonists and Stoics an
intense dislike for the coarseness and “errors” of the Epicureans.
The congruence of some central doctrines of the pagans with Judaeo-​
Christian teaching is explained by a somewhat elaborate historical myth.
Ancient thinkers held the idea of a primitive wisdom that, though lost in its
archetypal form, was dispersed into the world in bits and pieces, as it were.3
As the second-​century writer Celsus expressed it, “An ancient doctrine has
been handed down, which has always been maintained by the wisest nations
and cities and wise men.”4 Some believed that these fragments of wisdom had
been turned into myths, thereby distorting the ancient truth. The task of the
philosopher was not to come up with new ideas, but to reconstruct the archetype of ancient wisdom from the remaining fragments—​much as a classical
philologist might reconstruct the work of an author. The locus of this wisdom
was often situated in Egypt. On this much, pagans and (Judaeo-​)Christians
agreed. But here the myth splits into two contradictory narratives. Pagans
traced the wisdom of Plato to Pythagoras, who had allegedly acquired wisdom in Egypt. Jews and Christians both argued that their wisdom was far
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more ancient. Philo claimed that Moses was the dual heir of God’s revelation
and Egyptian doctrine, and that Pythagoras and Plato had gleaned what they
knew indirectly from Moses. In some of the Christian accounts the Greeks
are accused of plagiarizing Moses.5 Other Christians, such as Justin Martyr in
his First Apology, explained the congruence of pagan philosophical ideas with
Christian teachings by the Stoic concept of “seminal reasons,” that is, seeds of
truth.6 These are distributed as the logos to all humankind, even to those who
lived before Christ the Logos. That pagans also had a hint of the Logos himself
was believed to be clearly shown by the poet Vergil, who in his Fourth Eclogue
appeared to echo the prophesy of Isaiah that allegedly predicted the birth of
Christ.7
All of these apparent congruities, however, could not paper over the serious differences between pagans and Christians.8 Pagans were willing to tolerate the “foolish” beliefs and practices of Christians (within limits, of course),
but Christians did not return the favor. They and they alone possessed the
truth. Beyond the issue of tolerance or lack of it were serious divisions of
dogma. Pagan philosophers, with the exception of the Stoics, did not believe
in providence, except in the sense that god or nature made the world for the
best. They continued to believe (with the possible exception of Plutarch9) that
God did not interfere with nature, or intervene in human affairs; what happens to people occurs through some combination of fate and free will. This
implies that prayer is useless (despite the fact that non-​philosophical pagans
continued to pray as fervently as they ever did). Some late Stoics allowed that
one might beseech the gods to strengthen one’s virtue or rationality, but that
was as far as it went.10 Although Christians accepted that the soul is immortal,
they did not agree that it was eternal; it was created by God in time. Plato’s
arguments for the preexistence of the soul were rejected along with his doctrine of reincarnation. (The great biblical scholar Origen fell into grave disrepute for accepting such ideas.) The greatest gap of all, however, was between
polytheism and monotheism. Whatever one makes of the Christian idea of the
Trinity, Christians themselves believed they were strict monotheists, and they
accepted the first commandment of the decalogue as absolute: “Thou shalt not
have other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2).
The current assault by the new atheists on the Old Testament God has its
basis in the ancient debate between pagans and Christians over the impassiveness of God, that is, the idea that God cannot undergo any kind of change,
because his nature is perfect, therefore constant. The three “theist” schools of
pagan philosophy, beginning with Plato himself, taught that god is unchangeable and unmovable in the emotional sense. Stoics, Peripatetics (followers of
Aristotle), and even the Epicureans believed that god is apathēs, literally “without suffering.” This means, above all, that god does not become angry and
vindictive. Homer and the ancient poets erred when they spoke of Zeus as
angry. But North African Christians, starting with Tertullian, and extending
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to Augustine, rebuked pagan arguments that god is impassive.11 Lactantius
(early fourth century c.e.) sought to justify divine anger as an aspect of divine
justice in his treatise On the Wrath of God. For pagan thinkers, of course, such
attempts constituted a huge step backward intellectually: it undid the advances
of Xenophanes and Plato in giving the world a nobler idea of god. The ancient
philosophers, after consulting their dictionaries, would likely have agreed
with Dawkins about the following:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant
character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty tyrant; a petty,
unjust control freak: a bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential,
megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.12
Clearly this God does not meet the Greek philosophical standard of
impassivity. Moreover, even if one discounts the annoying personality flaws
attributed by Dawkins to the Old Testament God (Yahweh), there is the other
difficulty that God must be immutable. But the God who spoke to Moses in the
form of a burning bush (Exod. 3:2) is but little different from Athena appearing to Odysseus in the guise of Mentor. Thus Yahweh is alleged to do what
Plato said god cannot do: he cannot change his nature, for god must by definition be a perfect being, and any change from perfection is a change for the
worse. The myths of the Jews had to be held accountable to the same standard
of morality and believability as the myths of the Greeks.
We return to a crucial point: for pagans, god cannot do the impossible,
nor does he interfere with nature. Even if god had a role in creating the world
(agreed upon by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, as noted in ­chapter 8), he created it in such a way that it functioned on its own without interference from
heaven. God cannot “make a bull or a horse out of ashes.” Christians, however,
believed with Jews that there was no limit to the will and power of God; he
could even change the nature of what he created. The issue came to a head
over Christian insistence on the resurrection of the body—​an idea derived
from intertestamental Judaism. This notion was ludicrous to most pagans, for
whom the only kind of immortality possible was that of the soul. What would
prevent the body from decaying? How could a dead body, with its weight,
ascend into the heavens? But Christians remained adamant that all things are
possible with God. He will make new “spiritual bodies” that will bring eternal
bliss to the elect, eternal pain to the damned.13 Educated pagans, for the most
part, had disposed of such “superstitions” as the Isles of the Blest and Hades
long ago. The divide between pagans and Christians on the powers of God/​
god was unbridgeable.
In the centuries just before the rise of the Roman Empire and also during
the Empire, Alexandria in Egypt, founded by Alexander (d. 323 b.c.e.) himself,
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became the intellectual and cultural capital of the ancient world, eclipsing both
Athens and Rome. Alexandria might be likened to Paris as the scene of the
avant-​garde. It was where everything interesting happened; it was where many
with intellectual or artistic ambitions went. It could equally well be compared
to New York for the same reasons. Moreover, and importantly, Alexandria was
like New York in its broad ethnicity and religious diversity. From the beginning, Alexandria was a multiethnic society. Its population would have included
native Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, peoples from surrounding North African
areas, and a growing Jewish diaspora. In the centuries after Christ it embraced
a significant Christian population. All would have attended the same schools.
Origen, the great Christian exegete, and Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism,
sat at the feet of the same teacher, Ammonius Saccas. For all that, Alexandria
was not a peaceful place. It was the site of Jewish pogroms and Christian persecutions; it was later the scene of rioting by Christian factions.
Alexandria was also the site where the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament), was said to be
compiled in the third century b.c.e. The Jews who migrated to Alexandria
read their scriptures in that version, as fewer of them, with the passage of
time, were able to read Hebrew or Aramaic. It is in this milieu that we meet
Philo (better known as Philo Iudaeus, “Philo the Jew”). Philo was a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria. As an old man he led
a delegation to Rome in 39 or 40 c.e. to protest the mistreatment of Jews
that had resulted from their pleas for citizenship. Beyond this, we have no
knowledge of his dates or activity.14 But his voluminous writings survive,
mostly preserved by the Christian writer Origen for his library in Caesarea
in Judaea. Apart from his Life of Moses and voluminous writings on Jewish
scripture (the Old Testament), he wrote works of a philosophical character.
He was intimately familiar with the major Greek philosophers and with
Greek literature, including Homer. Not only had he read his Homer, but he
was also familiar with Greek modes of interpreting the poet, as the following passage from his work On Providence shows:
If you apply the mythical story of Hephaestus to fire, and the account
of Hera to air, and what is said about Hermes to reason, and in the
same way that which is said of others, following in order, in their
theology, then in fact you will become a praiser of the poets you have
just been condemning, so that you will realize that they alone have
glorified the divine in a seemly manner.15
The interpretation of Hephaestus as fire, Hera as air, and Hermes as reason
point to Philo’s knowledge of the kind of allegoresis that had been expounded
in the sixth century c.e. by Theagenes of Rhegium. Like Theagenes’ list of
allegorizations, Philo’s included both physical and mental (psychological)
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phenomena. It is of the substitutionist type and operates without appeal to
etymology. However, Philo’s considerable fame in subsequent eras did not
depend on his remarks on Homer, but rather on his willingness to apply to
the scriptures the same methods of allegoresis as the Greeks used to interpret
pagan literature. In a remarkable passage interpreting the trees of life and
knowledge that stood in the Garden of Eden, Philo writes:
And these statements appear to me to be dictated by a philosophy
which is symbolical rather than strictly accurate. For no trees of life or
of knowledge have ever at any previous time appeared upon the earth,
nor is it likely that they will appear hereafter. But I rather conceive
that Moses was speaking in an allegorical spirit, intending by this
paradise to intimate the dominant character of the soul, which is full
of innumerable opinions as this figurative paradise was of trees. And
by the tree of life he was shadowing out the greatest of the virtues—​
namely piety towards the gods.16
In a passage in another work, Questions on Genesis, he allows for the existence
of the Garden, but emphasizes its symbolic meaning:
Of Paradise, so far as the literal meaning is concerned, there is no
need to give an explicit interpretation. For it is a dense place full of
all kinds of trees. Symbolically, however, it is wisdom or knowledge of
the divine and human and of their causes.17
In the first passage, Philo applies the doctrine of plausibility to deny the existence of the Garden as described. This is based on the principle that only the
things that are possible now were possible in the past, or will be in the future.
After rejecting the credibility of the Garden myth, he proceeds to salvage it
through psychological allegory: Moses (who was widely believed to be the
author of Genesis) was contriving a fable about the soul and the virtues of
the soul. In the second passage, Philo accepts the possibility of the coexistence of a literal meaning and an allegorical one in the same passage. Modern
critics—​as well as some ancient Greeks—​might well bridle at such inconsistency. However, one must simply accept the fact that apparent contradictions
of this nature typified much of what was acceptable criticism in the Greek and
Roman worlds.18 Of course, apparent contradictions in interpretations of the
same passage may reveal growth or development in exegetical method. In fact,
in his second trial of interpreting the passage, Philo seems to have foreshadowed Porphyry’s approach to Homer’s “Cave of the Nymphs.” Porphyry does
not deny the existence of the cave, but retains its existence while exploring
its symbolic meaning. Philo’s second approach in interpreting the Garden is
markedly different from the substitutionist method of the first passage cited.
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Like Porphyry’s cave, Philo’s Garden retains its existence. It must remain in
our line of vision as a physical object all the while we seek with the mind’s eye
to interpret it.
Philo interests us as well, because in his great work On the Creation of
the World, an exegegis of the six days of creation as described in Genesis, he
strove deliberately to reconcile the biblical text with the doctrines of Plato’s
work on creation, Timaeus. The reconciliation was eased by the fact that
the translators of the Septuagint had rendered Hebrew words describing
the creation with the familiar Greek philosophical terms genesis, kosmos,
and archē—​e xactly the terms used by Plato at the opening of part II of
Timaeus. 19 Then there are the very important resemblances of one to the
other in content. The God of Genesis, like the demiurge, made the world
before the start of time. God had already created heaven and earth and light,
and had separated the waters of the firmament from the waters below before
setting lights in the sky to rule over night and day. That did not happen
until “the fourth day.” Philo also believed he saw glimpses of Plato’s forms
in Genesis situated in the mind of the creator, for he describes the process
of creation thus:
Then, having received in his own mind, as on a waxen tablet, the
form of each image he carries in his heart the image of a city,
perceptible as yet only to the intellect … engraving them in his
mind like a good workman [demiourgos], keeping his eyes fixed on
his model, he begins to raise the city of stone and wood, making the
corporeal substances to resemble each of the incorporeal ideas.20
The allusions to the Timaeus are unmistakable. At places, one has the
impression that the Timaeus account of creation overlays the Torah’s account
like a transparency. One can read the Torah through Plato. Philo refers to
Moses—​regarded by Jews and Christians alike as the author of the Torah
or Pentateuch—​as one “who had early reached the summits of philosophy,
and who had learnt from the Oracles of God” (1.8). Thus, Moses was twice an
heir: he had received instructions in philosophy from the Egyptians and the
direct inspiration of God. These combined into a single unimpeachable teaching. The restoration of the “archetype” of the ancient revelation is thus assisted
by the use of Plato’s Timaeus, a later, but nevertheless trustworthy, witness to
it, because he too was inspired by the ancient wisdom of Egypt.21
With Philo, we witness a significant instance of cultural transference. Philo was not the first to publish a demonstration that allegorical
interpretation—​a method developed by pagan Greeks—​could be used to elucidate God’s Word as received by Jews. The practice was begun more than a
century earlier by Aristobulus of Panaeas, who also argued that Plato could
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have known the Torah.22 However, it is from Philo’s interpretative work that
we can draw a straight line to the Christian Origen (ca. 185–​ca. 255). Origen
was also an Alexandrian who was steeped in Platonism. When he moved from
Alexandria to Caesarea to establish his own school, he brought with him the
works of Philo that he had collected. Philo’s works exercised a direct influence
on Origen. as we can see by comparing yet another of Philo’s interpretations
of the Garden of Eden tale with Origen’s exegesis. Philo wrote:
For let not such impiety ever occupy our thoughts as for us to suppose
that God cultivates the land and plants paradises, since if we were to
say so, we should presently be raising the question of why he does so;
for it could not be that he might provide himself with pleasant places
of recreation and pastime, or with amusement. Let not such fabulous
nonsense ever enter our minds; for even the whole world would not be
a worthy place or habitation for God, since he is a place to himself… .23
The sentiment is closely echoed by Origen somewhat more sardonically:
“And who will be found simple enough to believe that like some
farmer ‘God planted trees in the garden of Eden, in the East’ and that
He planted ‘the tree of life’ in it, that is a visible tree that could be
touched… .24
Like Philo, Origen knew pagan literary works as well as he knew the philosophers, as his Contra Celsum (“Against Celsus”) reveals. Also like Philo,
Origen was fully conversant with Greek mythology and Greek methods of exegesis. He was cognizant of the fact that biblical stories were derided as implausible by pagan critics. He addresses both issues synoptically in his attack on
the pagan Celsus:
He who approaches the stories [i.e., Homer’s] generously and wishes
to avoid being misled in reading them will decide which parts he
will believe, and which he will interpret allegorically, searching
out the intentions of the authors of such fictions, and which he
will refuse to believe, and will consider simply as things written
to please someone. And having said this, we have been speaking
in anticipation about the whole story of Jesus in the Gospels. We
do not urge the intelligent in the direction of simple and irrational
faith, but wish to advise them that those who are going to read this
story need to be generous in their approach, and will require a great
deal of insight … [the] power of penetration into the meaning of the
Scriptures in order that the intention with which each passage was
written may be discovered.25
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Origen is addressing the historicity of the Trojan War, and the claim that it
never happened on the ground that Homer’s narrative contained unbelievable
stories “such as Achilles having had Thetis, a sea-​goddess, as his mother” or
that Aeneas was the child of Aphrodite.26 Similarly, one could deny the truth
of the story of Oedipus and Jocasta because it contains an episode involving
a mythical monster, the Sphinx. Origen counters effectively by appealing to
the same principles used by Plutarch and others before him. The overarching
principle is that of plausibility. The job of the interpreter is to purify mythos
with logos. One accepts what is possible for rational humans to believe, discards
the completely unbelievable, and reinterprets the rest. The same principle can
be carried over to the interpretation of scripture. Origen, like Philo, was prepared to adopt the methods devised by pagan Greeks to deal with the difficulties posed by many passages in scripture. Philo’s title “Questions regarding
Genesis” reminds us of the books titled “Homeric Problems.” The job of the
interpreter is to collect the passages (whether in Homer or the Bible) that have
caused problems for others, and address them head on.
Origen’s work “Against Celsus” is interesting for another reason. Origen
deals with the comparison of biblical tales and pagan myths, refuting charges
by pagans that the biblical stories are even more nonsensical or immoral than
pagan ones. He defends the account of the creation of woman from Adam’s rib
against Celsus, arguing that it has as much claim to having been composed
allegorically as Hesiod’s fable that Zeus created woman as a punishment
for Prometheus’s theft of fire (Against Celsus 4.38). In answering the charge
regarding the story in Genesis that the sons of God entered into the daughters
of men (Gen. 6:4), Origen replied that the tale was far less offensive than that
of the “father of gods and men” having intercourse with his own daughter.27
A much more challenging proposition for Origen was dealing with the taunt
that the resurrection of Christ was no more real than the numerous katabases
(descent into Hades stories) in pagan mythology. Origen was trapped here. He
could not allow the claim that Christ’s resurrection was a myth, for it was the
central doctrine of Christianity. It had to be accepted as historical fact. He met
the challenge squarely. He argued that there was no evidence for any of the
claims that the heroes named really descended into Hades and returned. On
the contrary, Christ’s death, at least, was witnessed publicly. As for his resurrection, Origen does not rely on the witness of the disciples, but argues that
the same disciples believed it so deeply that they were willing to die for their
belief (2.56). Even though the argument is far from convincing, it is grounded
in a rational theory of human psychology.
For the study of exegesis, Origen’s most important work was his On First
Principles, of which the fourth book is devoted entirely to principles of interpretation supported by examples. Origen at times appears to be even more
aggressive than Philo in pursuing rationalizing approaches to the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. While Philo at times allows literal and allegorical
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meanings to coexist, Origen notes cases in which literal interpretations are
impossible to accept, “ … since we often discover that the letter is impossible
or insufficient in itself because by it sometimes not only irrationalities but
even impossibilities are described.”28 Origen balances this statement by then
remarking that “in a great many cases the truth of the narrative meaning both
can and ought to be preserved.” For example, there is surely no reason to doubt
statements such as Jerusalem being the chief city of Judaea or that Solomon
built the temple of God in that city. Origen applies his rationalist principles to
both narratives and laws. As an example of an impossible happening in a narrative he cites the beginning of Genesis (1:5–​13):
To what person of intelligence, I ask, will the account seem logically
consistent that says there was a “first day” and a “second,” and “third,”
in which also “evening” and “morning” are named, without a sun,
without a moon, and without stars, and even in the case of the first
day without a heaven?29
He goes on to discuss impossible laws:
But if we must ask also about impossible laws, we find an animal
called the “goat-​stag,” which does not even exist, listed among the
clean animals Moses orders to be eaten; and the lawgiver prohibits
eating the “griffin,” which no one has ever mentioned or heard of
being able to fall into human hands (cf. Deut. 14:5; Lev. 11:13 LXX).
Moreover, concerning the quite well-​known observance of the sabbath,
it says: “You shall sit, each one of you, in your houses; no one shall
move from his place on the seventh day” (Ex. 16:29). It is impossible
to observe this commandment according to the letter, for no human
being can sit for a whole day so as not to move from the place where
he is sitting.30
However, Origen’s most lasting contribution to the interpretation of the
Bible did not consist in his deconstruction of the literal sense of passages that
presented difficulties for educated readers; it was, rather, the authority he lent
to the possibility of multiple interpretations of passages and his famous analogy between the human body and the letter of a text, and the human soul and
spirit and various figurative meanings: “Thus, just as a human being is said
to be made up of body, soul, and spirit, so also is sacred Scripture, which has
been granted by God’s gracious dispensation for man’s salvation.”31 Origen
does not fully address his tripartite division, as he makes no clear distinction between soul and spirit, but treats them in places as if they were synonymous. Moreover, he calls attention to the fact that there are passages where
multiple interpretations are impossible (4.2.5). His great authority in the West
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resonated through a Latin translation, and it was not long before exegetes were
speaking of a threefold meaning of scripture, assigning an allegorical meaning to the soul, and a moral sense to the spirit of Holy Writ.32
Origen, who dedicated his life to the study of the scriptures, also gave the
world the Hexapla, a six-​version edition of the Old Testament, of which only
a few fragments remain. The six versions were arranged in six columns as
follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Septuagint in Hebrew in Hebrew script
Septuagint in Hebrew transliterated into Greek script
the translation of Aquila (literal translation, finished 130 c.e.)
the translation of Symmachus (tending to paraphrase, late second
century c.e.)
5. the Septuagint (revised by Origen using Theodotian’s revision with editorial marks showing divergences from Hebrew)
6. translation of Theodotian (revision of the Septuagint, late second
century c.e.)
What, conceivably, was the purpose of such a labor-​intensive project that must
also have been labor intensive for its readers? I can think of two possibilities: (1) Origen was intent on establishing or facilitating a translation of the
Hebrew Bible that was as close as humanly possible to the original. (2) Origen
believed that God’s word had more than one meaning and thus allowed for
more than one possible interpretation (that is, translation), and that divergences could inspire different insights in different readers. There is probably
some truth in both these suggestions, but I think that Origen would have
inclined more to the second, while admitting the utility of the first. At any rate,
the second possibility fits well with his endorsement of multiple meanings of
passages in On First Principles. Just as one and the same passage can produce
different readings, a single passage in differing translations can give rise to
fresh insights into its meaning. In that case, meaning is to be found not in the
mind of the author (whether God or Moses or a scribe), but in the mind of the
reader.
If we may be permitted a bit of chronological leapfrogging, it is interesting to look at Origen’s Hexapla in the light of the Latin-​speaking Augustine’s
ideas on translation. Unlike Origen and his contemporary Jerome, Augustine
was not a philologist. He admitted to his difficulty in learning Greek, as well
as to his distaste for that language.33 He did not even attempt Hebrew. Thus,
like many of his contemporaries, he was held to ransom by the defective
Latin translations circulating in his day. He finished the larger portion of On
Christian Doctrine in 397 c.e., just a few years before Jerome published his
authoritative Latin translation known as the Vulgate. Thus, in On Christian
Doctrine, a guide to biblical studies, Augustine was forced to deal with the
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problem of divergent translations of the same passage. In his effort to guide
readers through this difficulty, he wrote:
Again, a text of the prophet Isaias reads: “If you will not believe, you
shall not understand,” and in another translation: “If you will not
believe, you shall not continue.” Which of these is to be followed is
uncertain unless the text is read in the original language[?]‌But both
of them contain something of great value for the discerning reader. It
is difficult for translators to become so disparate that they do not show
a similarity in one area of meaning.34
It would be hard to show how the almost Greekless Augustine could have
been influenced by Origen—​the entirety of the Hexapla contained Hebrew
and Greek texts exclusively. But seminal ideas, wafting over seas, have a way of
implanting themselves in unexpected places. Augustine’s ideas on the value of
differing translations jibes nicely with Origen’s thought and his own semiology: a sign or symbol points to something different from itself while retaining
its identity. The same scriptural text can be translated in different ways and
still retain its identity and value.
It may be worthwhile to explore another early Greek Christian writer who
used Greek methods of interpretation, not to defend scriptural stories but to
impugn Greek myths. This is Clement of Alexandria, born ca. 150 c.e., thus
more than a generation before Origen. A convert to Christianity, he attended
classes for catechumens in Alexandria. But he had obviously received a full
education in a regular state school, as his writing reflects close familiarity
with pagan Greek literature and philosophy. His magnum opus, Stromateis
(“Miscellanies”), is a bold attempt to present Christianity as a philosophy.
Clement was one of a number of Christian writers known as “apologetes,” who
were engaged in defending Christianity against pagan attacks. Origen, as we
have seen, was another. A significant part of the apologete’s task was to counterattack the attackers. One prong of attack was moral criticism: the apologete
underscores the violent and obscene nature of certain myths and ridicules the
idea that they can be used as models of behavior. The other was deconstruction. Clement, like other Christians intellectuals, had mastered the repertoire
of techniques developed by pagan Greeks to disprove the literal truth of their
own stories.35
A single principle guided the deconstructionists: myths are the result of
intellectual errors. They were invariably the products of simple minds that, in
an earlier time, gave the name of god to things in nature, including humans,
or else were deceived by a name. In his Exhortation to the Greeks, Clement
employs a critique that harks back to Prodicus of Ceos; the gods are just names
given to things in nature that are beneficial to men: “Others, when gathering
the fruits of plants that spring from the earth, called the corn Demeter, as the
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Athenians, and the vine Dionysus, as the Thebans.”36 He expands the critique
to include the deified abstractions Fear, Love, Joy, and Hope, which “the philosophers themselves, following the men of poetry, came to represent as types
of your emotions.”37 Euhemerus provided Clement with material for his explanation of the deification of Aphrodite: “For I would never be beguiled by the
claims of the islander Cinyras of Cypris, who had the audacity to transfer the
lascivious orgies of Aphrodite from night to day in his ambition to deify a harlot of his own country.”38 Euhemerus’s idea that gods are exceptional humans
who were deified after their deaths is obviously at work here.
Clement also knew that an entire myth can be generated from the misunderstanding of a name; the motif can be traced as far back as Hecataeus
(ca. 500 b.c.e.) and his take on the story of Heracles at Taenarus. Recall that
Plutarch had used the technique to disprove the existence of a monstrous sow
marauding in Crommyon, arguing that it was just the name of a fat slovenly
woman of the region. The learned Clement, unconvinced about the existence of the Muses, cited a chronicle from Lesbos that gave the “real” story
of their beginnings. In his Exhortation Clement doubted the traditional story
of their origin given by Alcman (and, of course, also Hesiod) that they were
the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Instead the Muses were nine Mysian
maids (note the etymological wordplay) serving in the house of Macas, king
of the Lesbians. Their beautiful singing voices soothed the king (who had a
quarrelsome nature). His daughter commissioned nine bronze statues to be
erected in their honor and placed in all the temples. Because their names were
pronounced Moysae (Mousae) in the Aeolian dialect, they were honored ever
afterwards as the Muses.39
This rationalization of the Muses’ origin offers the perfect segue to
Augustine, who gave a variant version of Clement’s interpretation in his On
Christian Doctrine. 40 Augustine was born in Thagaste (now in Algeria) in 354
c.e., and died in Hippo Regius (also in Algeria) in 430 c.e. He had served as
its bishop for over thirty years at the time of his death. In his youth he had
been attracted to philosophy by reading Cicero’s lost dialogue Hortensius, an
exhortation to pursue philosophy. Like other classically educated people of his
generation he was put off by his early encounter with the Bible. Not only did
the Latin translations of the time reflect a low literary standard, but their content was also repulsive to him. The young Augustine had not yet learned to
read for the spiritual sense of the words, but understood them literally. His
years in Italy (383–​388), and especially his tutelage under Bishop Ambrose at
Milan, introduced him to ways of reading scripture for figural meanings; at
the same time he became acquainted with Neoplatonism. He used a period
spent in retreat at Cassiciacum (near Milan) to enlarge his understanding
of the Bible and to deepen his acquaintance with philosophy (through Latin
intermediaries). His writings stemming from that period can be characterized as philosophical.
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It was as a Romanized North African that Augustine wrote his On
Christian Doctrine immediately before embracing the rigors of his long bishopric. The work is essentially a textbook on how to approach and understand
the Bible. Augustine’s experience in Italy ensured that he would bring a wider
culture to the Christianity he had embraced than the Bible-​focused religion
of his fellow countrymen. This breadth of vision filtered into his scriptural
exegesis. He had abandoned his profession as a teacher of rhetoric, but he
never turned against the proper use of rhetoric in Christian education—​and
its application to tropes in the Bible. Like St. Basil, whom we met earlier as a
defender of the usefulness of secular literature, he believed in taking what was
good from secular learning and putting it to Christian use:
If those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, have
said things which are indeed true and well accommodated to our
faith, they should not be feared; rather, what they have said should be
taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use.
Just as the Egyptians had not only idols and grave burdens which the
people of Israel detested and avoided, so also they had ornaments of
gold and clothing which the Israelites took with them secretly when
they fled, as if to put them to a better use. 41
Augustine’s great achievement in On Christian Doctrine lies in his theorizing
the idea of a sign. Porphyry had given a brilliant demonstration of how the
understanding of signs (symbols) could be applied to Homer’s “Cave of the
Nymphs,” and Philo had done this even earlier. But no one before Augustine
had explained what a sign actually meant. The idea that a thing can remain a
thing while signifying something else did not have to wait for twentieth-​century semioticians. 42 Augustine writes:
Strictly speaking, I have here called a “thing” that which is not used to
signify something else, like wood, stone, cattle, and so on; but not that
wood concerning which we read that Moses cast it into bitter waters
that their bitterness might be dispelled, nor that stone which Jacob
placed at his head, nor that beast which Abraham sacrificed in place of
his son. For these are things in such a way that they are also signs of
other things … Thus every sign is also a thing, for that which is not a
thing is nothing at all; but not every thing is also a sign. 43
The simultaneity of reception of a thing and a second thing signified by the first is at the heart of the symbolic mode. The use of a symbol
requires that the receiver be familiar with the thing signified. Thus, a
Christian on seeing an ox will be reminded of St. Luke, while a pagan
encountering an olive tree will recognize Athena as the goddess signified.
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Augustine also writes, “Figurative signs occur when that thing which we
designate by a literal sign is used to signify something else; thus we say
‘ox’ and by that syllable understand the animal which is ordinarily designated by that word, but again by that animal we understand an evangelist.”44 In this aspect, the symbolic mode and substitution allegory share
a common principle: both the symbolist reader and the substitutionist
encountering the name Hephaestus would know that it signifies a particular god, but the god also signifies fire. All of this is established by
convention as agreed upon in individual societies, as Augustine pointed
out in book 2, c­ hapter 24 of On Christian Doctrine. But there is an essential difference between the two types of interpreter, as already noted: the
symbolist reader will understand both the animal and the man when
running across the word “ox,” while the substitutionist reader, assuming that a code is at work, will understand only the man, and discard the
animal. 45
By favoring the symbolic mode over substitutionist allegory, the Christian
exegete could maintain the authority of the letter of the text. At times, however, Augustine seems to overlook the full implications of his sign theory, as
he devotes considerable attention to distinguishing those passages that should
be taken literally from the ones that should be understood figuratively. Recall
that Origen had done much the same thing. But in contrast to Origen, who
used the tried and true pagan principle of plausibility, Augustine sets out a
different criterion:
To this warning that we must beware not to take figurative or
transferred expressions as though they were literal, a further warning
must be added lest we wish to take literal expressions as though
they were figurative. Therefore, a method of determining whether a
locution is literal or figurative must be established. And generally this
method consists in this: that whatever appears in the divine Word that
does not literally pertain to virtuous behavior or to the truth of faith
you must take to be figurative. 46
Augustine elaborates “virtuous behavior” by returning to his central idea that
scripture can teach only love of neighbor and of God, and whatever contradicts these two loves must be taken figuratively. In these cases, the figural
must exclude the literal. Elsewhere in his book he significantly downplays the
notion of discarding the literal meaning:
Therefore, although all, or almost all of the deeds which are contained
in the Old Testament are to be taken figuratively as well as literally,
nevertheless the reader may take as literal those performed by people
who are praised… . 47
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The passage can leave little doubt that Augustine intends that both levels of
meaning of scripture be preserved. As his thought evolved over the decades,
Augustine showed an ever greater attachment to the letter of the text. By the
time he was midway through his monumental On the City of God, he insisted
that the literal sense had to be preserved at all costs. Discussing the various
interpretations of the Garden of Eden he wrote:
This is the kind of thing that can be said by way of allegorical
interpretation of paradise, and there may be other more valuable
lines of interpretation. There is no prohibition against such exegesis,
provided that we believe in the truth of the story as a faithful record
of historical fact. 48
One might be willing to speculate that this reattachment to literalism was
occasioned by melancholy reflection on the history of the pagan religions.
The skepticism of the philosophers regarding the literal truth of the Homeric
myths spread to the less educated segments of the population and eventually
undermined faith in the gods. The pagan rituals had become merely a good
excuse for a community barbecue, or a pornographic mime masquerading as
a divine mystery. Augustine, like Clement and Origen before him, was all too
aware that the pagan spin doctors regarded the narratives of the Bible as being
in no way different from the poets’ stories—​they were all fables. Augustine
knew that his role as a Christian teacher was to instruct his congregation and
his readers that the pagans had myths, but Christians had truths. Arion of
Methymna did not ride on the back of a dolphin, but Jonah did escape from
the belly of a whale. 49
We have taken our story of the methods of interpretation developed by
the Greeks as far as we can. Just as the Hebrews had despoiled the Egyptians,
so now the Christians took the techniques of Greek exegesis and put them
to a “better” use. Christianity had its own story to tell when it came to the
exegesis of the Bible. It is apparent that Christians developed new methods,
including some that were very different from their classical antecedents.
However, in the process of creating their own strategies, Christian interpreters had first to master all the techniques developed by their opponents,
the pagan Greeks. The two factions had attended the same schools, learned
from the same masters, and read the same books. Each side knew how to
deconstruct the other’s stories, as is shown by Origen in his Against Celsus
and by Clement in his Exhortation. In the end, however, it was the defensive
strategy that mattered for Christians as it had for pagans. The symbolist
method favored by the Neoplatonists and earlier Platonizing writers like
Philo was to prove more successful for Christian exegetes than the substitutionist method that characterized Stoic and earlier allegoresis. As we learn
from Augustine, signs or symbols had the advantage of preserving the letter
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simultaneously with the spirit, that is, the figurative meaning, of the text.
At the same time, it opened the door to other layers of meaning, including
the moral, and the anagogical—​t he meaning of a text that leads us upward
to God. This meaning, too, had come from the pagan Greeks. It is most
obvious in the hermeneutics of the Neoplatonist Proclus, who saw in myths
the symbols that lead the mind upward to the world of Nous, and even to a
state described as “beyond being” (hyperousia).
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13
Reflection: How Lasting Was
the Greek Achievement?
For those who believe in freedom of religion, free expression, and the separation of church and state, the fourth century c.e. had to be accounted one of
the worst centuries in human history, perhaps the worst. It was the century
that saw the beginning of an established church, the end of open debate on
religious issues, and, perhaps worst of all, the assumption of the right of the
state both to control religion and enforce its laws. By the end of that century,
Christianity was the only religion that could be openly practiced, and any
opposition to the teachings of its councils invited severe penalties, which the
state undertook to administer. How this all happened has been the subject of
numerous books, and no one answer has proved to be definitive. By the death
of Theodosius I in 395, all pagan ritual had been outlawed (including even ceremonies in private houses), all doctrines running counter to the Nicene Creed
proscribed, and pagan temples either demolished or refurbished for Christian
worship.
Pagans, understandably, were shocked, angry, and resentful. They could
hardly be expected to understand how such radical changes affecting so many
aspects of public and private life had come about so rapidly. Many felt condescension toward Christians for their “ignorant,” poorly written scriptures,
their “barbarous” rituals, and adherence to the cult of an executed criminal.
They pitied them much as they pitied the self-​castrating adherents of the goddess Cybele. But they were willing to tolerate them within limits: they did
not wish to be proselytized, and they tired of the riots and other disturbances
caused by Christian factions in large urban centers. What they expected from
Christians was tolerance, if not respect, in return. That is what Christians
refused to offer.
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Once Christians knew they were firmly in power, their leaders called for
the extirpation of every species of heretic—​and heretics included pagans.
Christians wanted nothing less than a theocracy, and they got it. But for two
main reasons, it was not absolute: (1) Christians did not attempt to replace the
imperial secular educational system with Christian schools; (2) they allowed
only a limited use of the Bible. That work was not really suitable as a self-​study
guide for Christians in their quest for salvation. It was too full of dangers to be
left to the untutored. Moreover, it was only one source of authority; the other
was the magisterium (teaching authority) of the Church.
In their haste to institute broad religious and social reform, Christian
“heads” overlooked two crucial factors: books and education. They smashed
the idols of the pagan gods and turned their temples into churches, but they
did not touch their books. The intricate theology they constructed was made
from the building stones of Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and
Stoicism. Christians never thought to burn the books of their mentors. They
were, on the one hand, all too conscious of their debt; on the other, much too
busy burning the books of Christian heretics.
When it came to education, nothing changed with the introduction of
anti-​pagan sanctions. The state was not pushed to interfere with the schools or
their curriculum, with the result that the books taught in the fourth century
were the same as those taught centuries before (though the curriculum had
shrunk). In other words, state education remained exclusively secular. The
schools of pagan philosophy were left alone for more than a century after the
Theodosian reforms. Religious schooling was not subsidized by the state, and
even as late as the sixth century those wanting an education in the Christian
scriptures had to seek it privately, at least outside of eastern centers such as
Alexandria.1 The texts of the pagan classics continued to be copied, and new
commentaries undertaken. While artists may have been encouraged to represent Christian themes, it remained perfectly legal to carve or paint or make
a mosaic of a pagan mythological motif. You just were not allowed to offer a
sacrifice to it once it was finished.
Equally important to limiting theocracy was the restriction of the authority accorded to The Book. To pagans and Christian converts from paganism, there was something distinctly alien about the scriptures, particularly
the Old Testament, a collection of books that Christians were compelled to
accept as the first part of “salvation history.” Christian theologians never managed to work out in any degree of detail what parts of the Law the faithful
were required to accept. From the beginning, Paul assured gentiles that they
were exempt from circumcision. Few, apart from Jewish Christians, took the
dietary regulations seriously. Fewer still, I suspect, asked the elders of the
community to have their children stoned to death for disrespect. The ten commandments were just about all that could be salvaged out of the Law, and they,
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too, were subordinated to Christ’s two great commandments regarding love
of God, neighbor, and self. The Old Testament was a document that ordinary
Christians should read with caution. There appeared to be a consensus that its
chief value consisted of its perceived prophesies of Christ, and the examples
given by figures that could be regarded as “types of Christ” such as Moses, or
as archetypes of particular virtues such as Abraham (faith) and Job (patience).
Much else had to be disregarded or somehow explained.
The authority of the entire Bible as a sure and infallible blueprint for
salvation was brought into question in a crucial theological debate. The first
three decades of the fifth century witnessed a harsh theological dispute that
encompassed Gaul, Italy, North Africa, and Syria, and reverberated in distant
Britain. This was the Pelagian controversy, instigated by the Briton Pelagius,
who challenged the idea that God’s grace was offered to some, but not others.
He claimed that all received God’s grace equally through their created good
nature, which included a free will, and the gift of the law. For the Pelagians,
the law included both testaments of the Bible, and provided the sure path to
salvation. It was the duty of all Christians to obey all of God’s commands, both
great and small, in both testaments: “Do everything, so we are not to select
some of God’s commandments as if to suit our fancy, but to fulfill them all
without exception.”2 (Pelagius’s writings never tell us exactly how this was
supposed to work, or give advice on how to deal with contradictory laws.)
While most of Pelagius’s opponents thundered against his deficient
notion of God’s grace, others attacked Pelagius for positing the Bible as the
indispensable guide to salvation. If Pelagius’s views on scripture were to prevail, only the literate would have a chance of being saved, and out of that elite
group, only those who could have had access to scriptures. For the “orthodox”
side, the scriptures, properly used, could be an aid to salvation, but were not
indispensable. Augustine had already addressed that point when he published
the first portion of On Christian Doctrine:
Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken
hold upon them, does not need the Scriptures except for the
instruction of others. And many live by these three things in solitude
without books.3
Those who felt the need to read them were warned that they were not writings for the untutored. The scriptures were chock full of obscure passages
and apparent contradictions, and should be approached with great caution.
Specialized training was required, and Augustine’s book offered precisely
that. At the very least, one must know how to recognize passages that can be
understood literally, and those that cannot. One cannot simply hand people a
Bible and tell them to read it to procure their salvation. Were Augustine able to
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drive through America today, he would be horrified to find a Gideon Bible in
every motel room where he stayed. As a loving father of his only son, he would
be concerned before all else that it might fall into the hands of children, or
young people, or those mentally incapable of using it properly.
For the Church, forced to come to terms with the requirement to include
the Old Testament in its most authoritative document, there were three basic
problems: (1) An unbiased reading of scripture would reveal that its words
either do not support or else explicitly contradict the theology of the Church
(for example, the doctrine of the Trinity, the perpetual virginity of Mary).
(2) The scriptures, especially the Old Testament, contain numerous examples of immoral behavior by the patriarchs (for example, Lot’s incest with his
daughters, Jacob’s defrauding of Esau) and examples of God behaving in a
vindictive manner (for example, punishing a king who did not slay every one
of his captured enemies). Augustine was all too aware of problems 2 and 3
when he wrote, “Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine
Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God
and of our neighbor does not understand it at all.”4 The pious reader, following Augustine, had to ignore those passages that encouraged the collection of
enemy foreskins or else find a way to interpret them figuratively.
The idea of figural interpretation ( figurate), broadly understood to include
different levels of meaning and to operate in different ways, was the salvation
of both the Bible and of intellectual freedom. Rational people could learn how
to understand scripture in non-​literal ways, just as Augustine learned from
the sermons of Ambrose. Intelligent pagans of the fourth and fifth centuries
were just as aware as Origen and Celsus that the biblical tale of the sons of
God having intercourse with the daughters of men was as much a fable as the
stories of Zeus and his earthly amours. Such stories were plasmata, “fictions,”
whatever their source. If one was going to retain rather than censor them, new
meanings had to be found. (Augustine struggled valiantly for an exegesis of
the “sons of God and daughters of men” story, but in the end declared it “apocryphal.”5) Christians were not compelled to declare belief in biblical stories
that were clearly implausible, or assent to narratives that appeared to condone
immorality or portray God as cruel and capricious. Even the account of creation given by Genesis did not have to be understood literally as occurring in
six normal calendar days.
The restrictions placed on the use and understanding of scripture was
the heritage of the pagan Greeks. The manifold ways in which Christians
could interpret the Bible mirrored the ways in which pagans could read
Homer and Hesiod. The process worked by accretion. No one method completely excluded another—​w ith the exception that, for the early Greeks, a
passage regarded as historically true would hardly be read allegorically,
although it could contain a moral lesson. (Here pagans and Christians differed, with Christians granting the possibility of a simultaneous literal and
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allegorical interpretation.) But Greek exegetes must be credited with devising substitutionist allegory (of both the physical and psychological types),
rationalist historiography (euhemerizing), moral interpretation (akin to
typology), and the symbolist mode (which allowed for retaining a literal
and a figurative meaning simultaneously). All of these were products of the
philosophical schools or movements beginning with the Presocratics and
advancing through the Greek Stoics, Peripatetics, and Platonists. They were
first adopted by Jewish Platonists, passed on to the Greek Christian Fathers,
and transmitted into the West through Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine.
I have attempted in this book to document significant parts of that narrative
and show where the turning points occur.
An assessment of the net benefits is more difficult. No one can claim
that Greek philosophy kept open the gates of intellectual freedom in the
upheavals of the fourth century. One could even argue the opposite: Greek
philosophy, reduced to dogma, expedited the triumph of Christianity. The
architects of this victory had anticipated Augustine’s principle of “despoiling
the Egyptians” and put their goods to a “better use.” As has been shown here,
Greek philosophy provided the building stones of Christian theology. Today
we would call the process “cooption.” But because Christians also adapted the
methods invented by the Greeks for performing anatomies on myths, they were
unable to erect a theocratic edifice that was airtight. The old Roman saying,
“Captured Greece captured its captors,” coined originally to express the paradox of the conquered Greek people dominating the culture of Rome, applies
here, too. Once Christian intellectuals had learned to read like Greeks, they
had to think like Greeks when reading their own books. They were as driven
as their pagan counterparts to investigate meaning. That was the essence of
historia. The evil demons of skepticism and criticism had got out of the box,
and there was no way to put them back in.
The pagan classics were also saved: at first, out of sheer pietas; later
because it was possible to show that they were not merely not incompatible
with Christian teaching, but in fact supported and enhanced it. Augustine
maintained his love of Vergil throughout life, and Jerome, who had sworn
never to read another pagan work, cited a wide assortment of classical works
through the whole range of his letters, often to show how they supported a
teaching of scripture. Indeed, the classics were retained as a type of propaideusis (preparatory study) to the scriptures and made the basis of the liberal
arts. The ancient writers were still needed as models of correct Latin grammar
and good style, which the scriptures, even in the “new and improved” version known as the Vulgate, often lacked. The classical writers (auctores) were
rescued from their service as handmaidens in the ninth century c.e. with the
“rediscovery” of allegory. That story remains to be told in full.6
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╇ 171
Notes
Preface
1. I give an outline of this thesis in my article “Classical Exegesis—╉From Theagenes
of Rhegium to Bernard Silvestris,” Florilegium 30 (2013 [2015]), 59–╉102.
Introduction
1. Mary R. Lef kowitz, Women in Greek Myth, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007), p. 9.
2. For an excellent review of the treatment of this story from ancient to modern times
see W. B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional
Hero (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963).
3. The incidents are found in the different recensions of so-╉
called Pseudo-╉
Callisthenes. See George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, ed. D. J. A. Ross
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1956), pp. 9–╉61.
4. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1, 313–╉415.
5. Bernard de Fontenelle, De l’origine des fables, 1724; see further references in Jaan
Puhvel, Comparative Mythology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1989), p. 11.
6. Puhvel, Comparative Mythology, p. 12.
7. For a review and critique of these theories see G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and
Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1973), pp. 10–╉31.
8. See Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek
Culture in the Early Archaic Age, trans. Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 89–╉127.
172
172â•…
notes to pages 5–16
9. See especially G. R. Boys-╉
Stones, Post-╉
Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its
Development from the Stoics to Origen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
10. For the story of this development, see Robert Lamberton, Homer the
Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989).
11. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 5, 1161–╉74, trans. Copley.
12. The thesis of Luc Brisson: How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation
and Classical Mythology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
13. For an excellent study of the ancient Greek historians and ethnologists’ approaches
to myth, see Paul Veyne, Did the Greek Believe in Their Myths?: An Essay on the
Constitutive Imagination, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago and London: Chicago
University Press, 1988).
14. In antiquity Orpheus was regarded as a real poet and works were attributed to him.
See M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 1–╉38.
15. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.2.6–╉12, trans. William Harris
Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), pp. 84–╉85.
16. See generally Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function.
17. For the Greeks’ late discovery of their Jewish neighbors and their literature, see Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 74–╉96.
18. The classic works are A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA; Harvard
University Press, 1960) and Milman Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse: The
Collected Writings of Milman Parry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
19. Plato, Ion, 530.
Chapter 1
1. Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Penguin Books,
1990), p. xiii, argues in favor of the reading of the Bible as a unitary work. This
reflects the historical reading of the scriptures as a single inspired narrative of
“salvation history.”
2. The language of the documents written in the so-╉called Linear B was shown to be
Greek. See Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek,
2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
3. See M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1971) and the Introduction to his edition of Hesiod’s Theogony
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).
4. The story of the reverence paid to Homer over the centuries and the ascription to
him of every kind of knowledge is beautifully limned by Lamberton, Homer the
Theologian.
5. Iliad 24, 527–╉33 describe the “two urns that stand on the door-╉sill of Zeus,” trans.
Richmond Lattimore, in The Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1961), p. 489. Zeus fills them, mingling good and evil and bringing blessings to
one, ruin to another.
6. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985), pp. 119–╉
215. W. K. C. Guthrie’s description of the
╇ 173
notes to pages 16 –28 â•… 173
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Homeric gods is as pertinent as when it was written: The Greeks and Their Gods
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), pp. 117–╉27.
Iliad 1, 260–╉74. Theseus and Perithoüs are placed in this group. They fought and
destroyed the beast-╉men.
Unlike the “old” heroes Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus, who actually descend
into Hades, Odysseus, who was born on this side of the temporal watershed,
converses with the shades of the underworld through a hole in the earth. Homer
describes a kind of necromancy that is not very different from King Saul’s consultation of the dead prophet Samuel in I Sam. 28:13–╉15, except that no prophetess is involved.
See the recent discussion of the Homeric psyche (“shade”) by A. A. Long, Greek
Models of Mind and Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 15–╉
48, and passim.
See Pindar’s description of the “Isle of the Blest” (where “Isle” is singular) in
Olympian Odes 2, 68–╉83. It is inhabited by those who keep their souls pure and by
heroes such as Achilles.
See James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 13–╉17.
This problem worried the anonymous author of a cosmographical work written in
the eighth century c.e. See The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: Edition, Translation
and Commentary, ed. Michael Herren (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011),
chapter 23.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin,
2008), p. 52.
A late tradition claims that Prometheus himself, aided by his brother, Epimetheus,
created men.
Theogony, lines 589–╉91, ed. and trans. H. G. Evelyn-╉White, in Hesiod, the Homeric
Hymns and Homerica, LCL (London: William Heinemann Ltd; Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 123.
This may explain Hesiod’s own belief that gods and humans came from the same
source (Works and Days, line 108): the gods came indirectly from their grandmother Gaia (Earth), and humans were made of earth.
My interpretation of Hesiod’s text. The origin of bronze-╉age men from ash trees
has another layer of complexity. Ash is the wood out of which spears are made—╉
hence the association with warfare and violence.
See Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought,
trans T. G. Rosenmeyer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953),
pp. 25–╉26.
Chapter 2
1. DK 21, B.10 (1:59); trans. J. H. Lesher, in Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments;
A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1992), p. 20.
2. Jack Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967, rept. 1987), p. 61.
174
174
notes to pages 28 –33
3. An example can be seen in John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 59.
4. Goody, The Interface, p. 64.
5. “Books,” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth,
and Esther Eidinow, 3rd ed., pp. 250–​51.
6. William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989), pp. 47–​48.
7. Harris, Ancient Literacy, pp. 48–​49.
8. For more discussion of this topic, see Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths,
pp. 7–​9.
9. The various traditions of reciting Homer at the Panathenaia have been critically
examined by Gregory Nagy, Homer the Preclassic (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 20–​28.
10. The story of the translation by seventy-​two scholars was regarded as a fiction by
St. Jerome. However, a twentieth-​century scholar doubted even the involvement of
Ptolemy II Philadelphus. See Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, p. 91.
11. Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (London: Phaedon Press
Ltd., 2001), pp. 36–​38.
12. A very readable account is given by Adam Nicholson, God’s Secretaries: The Making
of the King James Bible (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2003).
13. The text is available with an English translation in P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore, Res
gestae divi Augusti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).
14. His dating is dependent on a comment by Tatian (frag. 1 cit. in n. 15) that he was
active in the time of King Cambyses (530–​522 b.c.e.).
15. Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und deutsch, ed. Walther
Kranz. [DK] 12th edition (Dublin, Ireland, and Zürich, Switzerland: Weidmann,
1966), 72, nos. 1–​3, vol. II, p. 205.
16. Walter Ong, Literacy and Orality: The Technologizing of the Word (London and
New York: Routledge, 1982, rept. 2002), pp. 8–​9.
17. Harris, Ancient Literacy, p. 62.
18. West, The Orphic Poems, pp. 81–​82.
19. See “Hymns (Greek),” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., p. 736.
20. See especially G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin
and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1979), pp. 13–​14; also, most recently, Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in
the Ancient World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), pp. 28–​39. Whitmarsh (p. 28)
states, “When gods reveal their thoughts to mortals in written form, then mortals
can be held to account by reference to fixed texts.”
21. Iliad 2, 485–​87, trans. Lattimore, p. 89.
22. See Louise H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception
in Archaic Greek Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 12–​14.
23. Plato, Ion 533–​34, ed. and trans. D. A. Russell and Michael Winterbottom, in
Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in Translation (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1972), p. 43.
24. Aristotle, Poetics 1455a, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient Literary
Criticism, p. 113.
╇ 175
notes to pages 37–42 â•… 175
Chapter 3
1. Not really a satisfactory term, because it implies that little of importance in philosophy or science happened before Socrates. However, the term is too deeply embedded in the literature to attempt to replace it.
2. Notably by Rudolf Bultmann and his school. See, for example, Jesus Christ and
Mythology (London: SCM Press, 1960).
3. Burkert, Greek Religion, pp. 8–╉9.
4. These are poems addressed to a variety of gods. They “sing” the god or goddess
addressed and recount their deeds and benefits to mortals. Sometimes they end
with a petition or a warning. The hymns are handily consulted in Hesiod: The
Homeric Hymns and Homerica, ed. and trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-╉
White, LCL
(London: William Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp.
286–╉463.
5. Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 82, citing Richard Swinburne, Is There a God?
6. St. Augustine Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, 21.4–╉5, trans. Henry
Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 968–╉74.
7. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, p. 91, states that the earliest use of the Bible by a Greek
philosopher is by the author of On the Sublime [Longinus?], a work usually assigned
to the first century c.e.
8. Cited from R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London: Oxford University
Press, 1949), p. 1.
9. Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 13.
10. Cited from Lloyd, Magic, Reason, and Experience, p. 16.
11. Cited from Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience, p. 25.
12. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield [KRS], The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical
History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1983), no. 217, p. 198.
13. In his late work Timaeus. Modern philosophers are divided on how seriously to take
the fable as representative of Plato’s actual thoughts about the origin of the world.
However, philosophers and commentators from Aristotle to the twelfth century
c.e. never had the least doubt that Plato meant every word of it.
14. KRS nos. 84–╉85, pp. 88–╉89.
15. KRS no. 91, p. 95,
16. Aristotle, On the Soul 405a.
17. Plato, Tim. 36–╉37. Aristotle, On the Heavens 279a ad fin.
18. KRS no. 133, p. 141.
19. KRS no. 134, p.141,
20. KRS no. 110, pp. 117–╉19. For a summary of theories about this substance see
Elizabeth Asmis, “What is Anaximander’s ‘Apeiron’?,” Journal of the History of
Philosophy 19.3 (July 1981), 279–╉97, at p. 279, n. 1.
21. KRS no. 146, p. 150 (gods come from air); KRS nos. 144–╉45, p. 150 (the air is a god).
22. KRS no. 160, p. 158.
23. See the detailed discussion of the archē in L. P. Gerson, Gods and Greek
Philosophy: Studies in the History of Natural Theology (London and
New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 5–╉32.
176
176
notes to pages 42–48
24. See generally Harold Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935; rept. Octagon Books, 1971).
25. The four causes can be illustrated by the homely example of making a chair: The
final cause (4) is the purpose of the chair: to provide humans comfort and relief
from standing. The purpose is achieved by designing a form (2) or shape to accommodate the human bottom, legs, arms, and back. But since one cannot sit on air
you need matter (1), or stuff, from which to make the chair. However, since a pattern and a pile of wood by themselves won’t make a chair, you need an efficient
cause (3), that is, a carpenter, to cut the pieces of wood and assemble them into
a chair.
26. KRS no. 190, p. 181. Stories of this type belong to a long tradition of slandering
one’s philosophical opponents by disparaging their appearance or way of life. They
should be taken with a grain of salt. The more salient point of the anecdote is that
even doctors cannot perform feats that are by nature impossible.
27. KRS no. 219, p. 198.
28. KRS no. 220, p. 198.
29. KRS no. 228, p. 202.
30. KRS no. 190, p. 181.
31. Aristotle, Meta. 1.3 (984a); more fully in On the Heavens 3.1 (298b).
32. DK 22, B57 (1:163); T. M. Robinson, trans. Heraclitus. Fragments. A Text and
Translation with a Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 39.
33. KRS no. 211, p. 193.
34. DK 21, B8 (1:26–​27); trans. Lesher, p. 21.
35. DK 21, B1 (1:126–​27); Lesher, p. 11.
36. KRS nos. 166–​9, p. 168.
37. KRS nos. 170–​72, p. 169.
38. Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.23, (1399b); cit. Lesher, p. 200.
39. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, p. 19, calls him an archē-​god. I have reservations
about this name, as it is not clear from the texts that Xenophanes’ god creates.
Moreover, even if god did create, he would still have required some type of preexistent (or coexistent) matter to work with. (Creation ex nihilo was unknown at that
time.) A god would thus not satisfy the requirements of an archē as understood
by Ionians. Xenophanes also said, “We come into being from earth and water”
(DK 21, B33 [1:136]); trans. Lesher, p. 37). These elements might be regarded as
Xenophanes’ archai, but the issue is complicated by his positing an external god.
40. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1947), pp. 43–​4 4.
41. For an assessment of his influence see again Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek
Philosophers, pp. 38–​54.
42. DK 21, B1, lines 19–​24 (1:127–​28); trans. Lesher, p. 13.
43. DK 21, B32 (1:136); trans. Lesher, p. 37.
44. KRS no. 177, p. 172.
45. KRS no, 476, p. 363.
46. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 2.6.9, trans. Patricia Curd, in
Anaxagoras of Clazomene: Fragments and Testimonia; A Text and Translation with
Notes and Essays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), p. 78.
╇ 177
notes to pages 48 –55 â•… 177
47. DK 59, A72; trans. Patricia Curd, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. A Text and Translation
with Notes and Essays (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press,
2007), p. 110.
48. KRS no. 563, p. 417.
49. KRS no. 569, p. 420.
Chaopter 4
1. On this point I follow Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers
(London: Routledge, 1982), pp. 406–╉9.
2. It is true that Melissos of Samos, a pupil of Parmenides, claimed that the One
is incorporeal (asōmaton); cf. KRS, no. 538; however, see the commentary,
pp. 400–╉1.
3. See the still useful article by A. W. Cambridge-╉Pickard, “Tragedy, Greek,” in The
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed., especially pp. 919–╉20.
4. See J. E. Taylor, “The New Atheists,” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[2010; peer-╉reviewed]: http://╉w ww.iep.utm.edu/╉n-╉atheis.
5. See especially Dawkins, The God Delusion, pp. 69–╉7 7.
6. A. B. Drachmann, Atheism in Greek Antiquity (Chicago: Ares Publishers, Inc.,
1977), pp. 1–╉7. For more recent work on atheism in antiquity see Jan N. Bremmer,
“Atheism in Antiquity” in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael
Martin (Cambridge, UK: University Press, 2007), pp. 12–╉32; Tim Whitmarsh,
Battling the Gods.
7. For details see Andrew Ford, Aristotle as Poet: The Song for Hermias and Its Context
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 56–╉67. Aristotle’s defenders claimed
that the verses lacked the characteristics of a paian, and in fact was a skolion, a
poem composed for a symposium.
8. DK 80, B 4 (2:265).
9. DK 80 B1 (2:263).
10. The complete paradox is “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is present to hear
it, did it make a sound?” The correct answer is “no,” because sound by definition
requires a receptor to occur. The paradox was wrongly attributed to the British
philosopher George Berkeley. Berkeley’s question, as formulated in section 45 of
his A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), poses the more
difficult problem of whether the flowers he saw in a garden continued to exist after
he left the garden.
11. Burkert, Greek Religion, pp. 285–╉90; see also George Mylonas, Eleusis and the
Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
12. Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 316.
13. DK 84, B 5 (2:317).
14. Cit. n. 10.
15. Walter Burkert, “Hesiod in Context: Abstractions and Divinities in an Aegean-╉
Eastern Koiné,” in Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium,
ed. Emma Stafford and Judith Herrin (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 3–╉20,
shows convincingly that the personification of abstracts is a feature of the Near
Eastern world, embracing Hebrew and Akkadian, among other literatures.
178
178â•…
notes to pages 55– 64
16. T. B. L. Webster, “Personification as a Mode of Greek Thought,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17 (1954), 10–╉21, at p. 14.
17. See Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods, pp. 166–╉72, with references.
18. The view of Drachmann, Atheism, pp. 43–╉4 4.
19. DK 23, B 53 (1:207).
20. The play has also been attributed to Euripides.
21. DK 25, B1 (2:386–╉87); my translation.
22. Drachmann, Atheism, p. 50.
23. Aristophanes, Frogs, lines 885–╉92, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient
Literary Criticism, p. 17.
24. Cited from Drachmann, Atheism, p. 53.
25. See now Mary R. Lef kowitz, Euripides and the Gods (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2016), who reminds us that Euripides’ depiction of the gods as cruel,
unjust, volatile, and fickle is meant as a description of their true natures. It does
not imply disbelief in their existence. See especially her concluding chapter,
pp. 193–╉204.
26. See Dirk Obbink’s excellent review of Epicurus’s teachings about the gods and religion and the reasons for the accusations against him: “The Atheism of Epicurus,”
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989), 187–╉223.
27. The statement is attributed to him by the Church Father Lactantius, On the Wrath
of God, �chapter 17.
28. See Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 2007), chapter 2, “Religion Kills,”
pp. 15–╉36.
29. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, book 1, lines 61–╉67, 78–╉79, trans. Frank
O. Copley (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977), p. 2.
30. Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods, pp. 156–╉72. While it is true, as Whitmarsh states
(p. 165), that the Skeptics contributed mightily to philosophical atheism by laying
its logical foundations, the principle established by the Academics (a branch of
Skepticism) that one cannot assent to the truth of propositions leads to the conclusion that one cannot assent to the proposition that god does not exist.
31. See Plato, Theaetetus 151E–╉152A), where Plato begins a long discourse against
relativism.
32. The expression of this notion par excellence is to be found in Herodotus,
Histories 3.38.
33. See Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, pp. 1–╉21, especially p. 21.
Chapter 5
1. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 8.3.
2. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 8.21; see Jean Pépin, Mythe et allégorie: Les origines grecques
et les contestations judéo-╉chrétiennes (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1976), p. 93.
3. KRS no. 213, p. 194.
4. Aristotle, Meta. 1.4 (984b), trans. Richard McKeon, in Introduction to Aristotle
(New York: The Modern Library, 2001), p. 696.
╇ 179
notes to pages 64–74 â•… 179
5. Aristotle, Poetics 1447b, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient Literary
Criticism, p. 91.
6. For a lively discussion of the topic see W. B. Stanford, Enemies of Poetry (London,
Boston, and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980).
7. Plato, Rep. B.377, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient Literary
Criticism, p. 52.
8. Herodotus, Histories 2.53, trans. De Sélincourt (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin
Books, 1965), p. 124.
9. Plato, Phaedrus 245a, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient Literary
Criticism, p. 75.
10. Claude Lévi-╉Strauss, Myth and Meaning (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1978), p. 3.
11. Aristotle, Poetics 1451b, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 103.
12. Poetics 1461a, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 128.
13. Poetics 1451b, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 102.
14. Plato, Rep. B.381–╉82, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 55.
15. See the fine survey of the topos by Jan Ziolkowski, “Old Wives’ Tales: Classicism
and Anti-╉Classicism from Apuleius to Chaucer,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 12
(2002), pp. 90–╉113. The title is somewhat misleading, as the article includes a significant amount of Greek and Roman material before Apuleius.
16. Rep. B.378, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 54.
17. Ibid.
18. Rep. 1. 597–╉99, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, pp. 67–╉69.
19. Poetics 1448b, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 94.
20. Ibid.
21. Poetics 1454a, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 110. Elsewhere in the work, however (1453a) Aristotle modifies this stance: “[The tragic hero] is not pre-╉eminent
in moral virtue, who passes to bad fortune, not through vice or wickedness, but
because of some piece of ignorance…â•›.” (trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 106).
22. For changing attitudes to literature in the Epicurean tradition see Elizabeth
Asmis, “Epicurean Poetics,” in Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in
Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace, ed. Dirk Obbink (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995), pp. 15–╉34.
23. Lucretius, The Nature of Things 3, 984, trans. Copley, p. 79; cf. Odyssey 11, 604–╉10.
Chapter 6
1. I recognize that modern scholars are generally skeptical that ancient authors consciously encoded their poems with allegorical messages, except, perhaps in scattered passages.
2. Plutarch, On the Study of Poetry, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, in Ancient
Literary Criticism, p. 516: “Some critics in fact have so forced and perverted the
meaning of these [passages] by using what used to be called hyponoia and is now
called allegory…â•›.”
3. An amusing illustration of the principle occurred some decades ago on the long-╉
running BBC political satire, “Yes, Prime Minister.” In one episode, the Prime
180
180â•…
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
notes to pages 74–85
Minister heads a delegation to Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is strictly forbidden.
During the negotiations with the Saudis, the Prime Minister’s secretary periodically interrupts business with the message that there is a delegation of teachers
who urgently need to see him. The P.M. would abruptly leave and return a few minutes later—╉each time a little more intoxicated than the last. Most viewers understood that the code involved substituting the name of an occupation for Teachers, a
brand of Scotch whiskey.
Reported in Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.20–╉32. A synopsis without the speeches
can be found in Basil, On Reading Greek Literature, �chapter 5.
Memorabilia 2.1.31, trans. Marchant, LCL, p. 99.
On the growing awareness of opposition between soul (mind) and body in the fifth
century b.c.e., see Long, Greek Models of Mind and Self, pp. 88–╉124.
It is true that the Judgment tale can be read literally and understood as the
prime cause of the Trojan War, as Vergil portrays it in the opening lines of the
Aeneid. But Homer (Il. 3, 39; 13, 769) calls Paris “woman-╉crazed” (gynaimanēs), a
moral flaw that determines his choice of Aphrodite (Sex) over Athena (Wisdom),
and Hera (Family Values), the attributes most commonly associated with these
goddesses.
Il. 9, 502–╉14, trans. Lattimore, pp. 211–╉12.
DK 8, frag. 2 (1:51–╉52).
Ibid., frag. 1 (from Tatian).
KRS no. 213, p. 194.
J. Tate, “The Beginnings of Greek Allegory,” Classical Review 41 (1927), 214–╉15.
Cit. n. 9.
Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths, pp. 37–╉38.
Not to be confused with the later Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was an Epicurean
philosopher, or Metrodorus of Chios, who was a disciple of Democritus.
DK 61, frag. 4 (2:49).
DK 61, frag. 3 (2:49). For recent observations on Metrodorus see Dirk Obbink,
“Allegory and Exegesis in the Derveni Papyri,” in Metaphor, Allegory, and the
Classical Tradition, ed. G. R. Boys-╉Stones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003),
pp. 177–╉88, at 180.
For Plato’s myths see Luc Brisson, Plato the Mythmaker, trans. Gerard Naddaf
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Chapter 7
1. Plutarch, proem, “The Life of Theseus,” trans. Edmund Fuller, in Lives of the Noble
Greeks. A Selection (New York: Dell Publishing, 1968), p. 10.
2. Ibid.
3. Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?, p. 8.
4. Not to be confused with Pherecydes the Syrian, who flourished in the sixth century
or earlier.
5. See Veyne, p. 7.
6. On the criterion of the present as a means of judging what happened in the past,
see Veyne, pp. 71–╉74.
╇ 181
notes to pages 85– 99 â•… 181
7. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 5, 878–╉91, trans. Copley, p. 133.
8. Recent work based on excavations has confirmed the existence of warrior
women in the region. See Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of
Warrior Women across the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2014).
9. Hecataeus, frag. 1a; Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
[reprinted with additions and corrections], [FgrH] (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,
1957), 1:7–╉8.
10. Hecataeus, frag. 27; Jacoby, FGrH 1:14.
11. Plutarch, Life of Theseus, trans. Fuller, p. 16.
12. Ibid.
13. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (The Library of the
Liberal Arts. Indianapolis, IN; New York: Bobbs-╉Merrill, 1958), 2.17.
14. Lactantius, De ira Dei 2.7–╉8, cit. Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths, p. 49.
15. The Geography of Strabo, 12.8, ed. and trans. Horace Leonard Jones, LCL
(London: Heinemann, 1917–╉1933, 1:67.
16. Ibid.
17. Herodotus, Histories 2. 143, trans. De Sélincourt, p. 159.
18. Herodotus, Histories 3, 122, cit. Veyne, p. 134, n. 24.
19. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 3, 978–╉1023.
20. Vergil, Aeneid 6, 719–╉51.
21. Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 1.2.1, trans. and ed. W. H. S. Jones, LCL 93–╉97
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, repr. 1931), 1:7–╉9.
22. Descriptions of Greece 1.3.3, trans. W. H. S. Jones, 1:15–╉17.
23. Ibid.
24. Descriptions of Greece 1.4.4, trans. W. H. S. Jones, 1:23.
25. Plutarch, Life of Theseus, trans. Fuller, p. 27.
26. Strabo. Geography 1.2.13–╉15, trans. H. L. Jones, 1:85.
27. Geography 1.2.9, trans. H. L. Jones, 1:73.
28. See Veyne, pp. 5–╉15.
29. Geography 1.2.8, trans. H. L. Jones, 1:69.
30. Geography 1.2.11, trans. H. L. Jones, 1:79.
31. Augustine, The City of God 16.8. See Michael Herren, “The Cosmography of
Aethicus Ister and Ancient Travel Literature,” in The World of Travellers: Exploration
and Imagination, edited by Kees Dekker, Karin Olsen, and Tette Hofstra (Leuven,
Belgium: Peeters. 2009), pp. 5–╉30, at pp. 12–╉13.
Chapter 8
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Aristotle, On the Heavens 298b.
KRS no. 538, p. 400.
KRS no. 211, p. 193.
Not the only allowable interpretation of the statement; see above, p. 56.
KRS 171, p. 169.
KRS no. 476, p. 363.
Ibid.
182
182â•…
notes to pages 99 –111
8. The opinion of Drachmann, Atheism, pp. 26–╉27.
9. See, for example, Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1951), Â�chapter 4, “The Failure of Nerve,” pp. 119–╉65.
10. See John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism (London: Duckworth,
1977), p. 29.
11. Plato, Tim. 38, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1949), p. 20.
12. Tim. 41, trans. Jowett, pp. 23–╉24.
13. Cited by Aristotle, On Rhetoric B 26, 1399b5, trans. Lesher, p. 200.
14. See the article “Intelligent Design” [https://╉
en.wikipedia.org/╉
wiki/╉
Intelligent_╉
design] in Wikipedia, which begins by characterizing its topic as “pseudo-╉
scientific.” The author traces the concept to the Middle Ages (the usual suspect for
crimes against reason) without acknowledging the crucial roles played by Plato and
Aristotle.
15. This is a pointed critique of the archē, the divine element that is the source and
cause of things including motion.
16. Tim. 48. See the discussion of this passage by F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The
Timaeus of Plato Translated with a Running Commentary (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd, 1937), pp. 161–╉77.
17. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.43; City of God 8.11; see G. R. Boys-╉Stones, Post-╉
Hellenistic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 116–╉17.
18. Aristotle, Phys. 199a–╉b; in greater detail: Meta., book 7.
19. Aristotle, On the Soul, book 3, �chapter 5 (430a), trans. McKeon, p. 592.
20. Aristotle, Meta. 12.6, 1071b, trans. McKeon, p. 878.
21. Aristotle’s idea of necessity seems identical to that of Leucippus, namely, that nothing happens in vain, and everything happens for a reason (DK, B2 (2:81)). His
quarrel with Leucippus was over the need for a final cause. Democritus “tweaked”
Leucippus’s notion of necessity, adding that events happen from causes, but
the causes are not purposeful; see Daniel W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek
Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 621.
22. Meta. 12.7, 1072b, trans. McKeon, p. 880.
23. Meta. 12.7 (1073a), trans. McKeon, p. 881.
24. Phys. 2.8 (199a), trans. McKeon, p. 249.
25. On the Heavens 1.4 (271a) ad fin., trans. J. L. Stocks in Richard McKeon, Basic Works
of Aristotle, p. 404.
26. Tim. 43, trans. Jowett, p. 25.
27. See especially On the Heavens 279b –╉283b.
Chapter 9
1. See the interesting article by A. A. Long, “Stoic Readers of Homer,” in Homer’s
Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, ed. R.
Lamberton and J. J. Keaney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992),
pp. 41– ╉66.
2. A third type of allegory was introduced later, and mainly in a Roman context. This
is historical allegory, in which mythical or folkloric characters are substituted for
183
notes to pages 111–122
183
prominent figures of history. But we shall have enough to do discussing the two
basic types described.
3. See, for example, Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque,
rev. ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2009), pp. 273–​74.
4. Pépin, Mythe et allégorie, p. 406n, citing Clement of Alexandria.
5. Hephaestus and Hestia (guardian of the hearth) were associated in classical
mythology, making a folk etymology a possibility. Cf. W. H. Röscher, Lexikon der
griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: Teuber, 1884–​1893), 1.2, col. 2037.
An attested etymology of the name is from hēphthai (“to kindle, set afire”).
6. J. Tate, “Plato and Allegorical Interpretation,” Classical Quarterly 23 (1925), 142–​54,
at pp. 142–​43.
7. See Pépin, Mythe et allégorie, pp. 127–​31.
8. Cornutus, Epid. 1.6.6, in Heinz-​Günther Nesselrath et al., ed. and trans., Die
griechischen Götter: Ein Überblick über Namen, Bilder, und Deuthungen, Scripta
Antiquitata Posterioris ad Ethicam Religionemque Pertinentia (Tübingen,
Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), p. 36.
9. Hesiod, Theog., lines 182–​
97, trans. Norman O. Brown (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1953), p. 58. Some editors omit the last line with its etymological
explanation as interrupting the sense.
10. Hans Friedrich August von Arnim, ed., Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [SVF]. 4 vols.
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1900–​1910 [reprint 1960–​1969]), 2:1071–​74.
11. Hesiod, Theog., lines 31–​33, trans. Brown, p. 54.
12. See nn. 191–​92 in Nasselrath’s edition.
13. See Michael Lapidge, “Stoic Cosmology,” in The Stoics, ed. J. Rist (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 161–​85, at p. 165.
14. Cicero, C. P. McGregor, trans., The Nature of the Gods (Harmondsworth,
UK: Penguin Books, 1972), 2.64, p. 148. Curiously, the Latin etymology of
Saturn as “sated” was recycled into Greek. In Neoplatonic cosmology, Kronos
(Saturn), who stands for Nous (Mind), is “sated” with his offspring, who stand
for the plenitude of the intellectual principle; see Brisson, How Philosophers
Saved Myths, pp. 76– ​7 7.
15. The Nature of the Gods 2.65–​66, trans. McGregor, pp. 149–​50.
16. The Nature of the Gods 2.63–​64, trans. McGregor, p. 148.
17. See the insightful study of Cornutus in G. R. Boys-​
Stones, Post-​Hellenistic
Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 49–​59.
18. H.P. 5.1, ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, p. 9.
19. Ibid.
20. H.P. 6.1, ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, p. 13.
21. H.P. 40.2–​4 , ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, pp. 72–​73.
22. H.P. 40.13, ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, pp. 74–​75.
23. H.P. 66.1, ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, p. 105.
24. H.P. 66.7, ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, p. 107.
25. H.P., ed. and trans. Russell and Konstan, p. 106, n.1.
26. H.P. 41.12, ed. Russell and Konstan, p. 77.
27. See Boys-​Stones, Post-​Hellenistic Philosophy, pp. 28–​43.
28. KRS, no. 191.
184
184â•…
notes to pages 124–135
Chapter 10
1. Aristotle was working from memory here and got it wrong. The episode actually
involved Circe (Od. 12, 219–╉20), and the words are spoken by Odysseus to his crew.
2. Aristotle, N.E. 1149b, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-╉Merrill,
1962), p. 192. Aristotle is citing Il. 14, 214.
3. N.E. 1110a, trans. Ostwald, pp. 53–╉54. Alcmaeon may be a reference to Euripides’
play Alcmaeon in Psophis, of which a fragment survives.
4. Not to be confused with the later historian Dio Cassius.
5. Dio Chrysostom, Fourth Discourse, ed. and trans. W. Cohoon and H. L. Crosby, 5
vols., LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961–╉1971), 1:191–╉93.
6. Consistency was not one of Plutarch’s virtues. Plutarch shamelessly engaged in
allegorizing in his essay Isis and Osiris.
7. Plutarch, On the Study of Poetry, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 509.
8. Ibid.
9. On the Study of Poetry, trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 511.
10. Trans. Russell and Winterbottom, pp. 512–╉13.
11. Trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 513.
12. Trans, Russell and Winterbottom, p. 514.
13. Trans. Russell and Winterbottom, p. 516.
14. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian, p. 24.
15. See Jeffrey Beneker, “Plutarch and St. Basil as Readers of Greek Literature,” Syllecta
Classica 5.22(1) (2010), 95–╉111.
16. Basil, “Address to Young Men,” in Saint Basil: The Letters, edited and translated by
Roy Deferrari and Martin McGuire, 4 vols. LCL (London: William Heinemann and
Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1934), 1:387.
17. Basil, “Address to Young Men,” Â�chapter 4, trans. Deferrari, 1:387–╉89.
18. Augustine Confessions 4.6, trans. Pine-╉Coffin (London: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 77.
Chapter 11
1. Apuleius is credited with the Platonist tracts On the Daimon of Socrates and On the
Teaching of Plato; the authenticity of the second is disputed.
2. Plato, Symposium, trans. William Hamilton (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin
Books, 1951), pp. 78–╉79.
3. See the famous example in Augustine, Confessions 8.12, trans. Pine-╉
Coffin,
pp. 177–╉78 describing Augustine’s prompting by the voice of a child to open the
Bible to a life-╉changing passage.
4. Not all scholars are agreed on treating “Cupid and Psyche” as an allegory. For an
excellent history of the interpretation of the story, see Claudio Moreschini, Il mito
di Amore e Psiche in Apuleio (Naples: M. D’Auria Editore, 1994), pp. 7–╉96. From
Fulgentius (sixth century c.e.) through the Renaissance, readers understood the
fable as a Platonic allegory. Dissent from this view is largely modern.
5. Plato, Phaedrus 250E, trans. R. Hackforth (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill,
1952), p. 96.
6. Plato, Plato’s Phaedrus 246E, trans. Hackforth, p. 70.
185
notes to pages 136 –145
185
7. For a helpful introduction, see Robert Lamberton’s essay “The Neoplatonists and
the Spiritualization of Homer,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of
Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, ed. Robert Lamberton and John Jay Keaney (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 115–​33.
8. Odyssey 13, 102–​12, trans. Robert Lamberton, in Porphyry on the Cave of the Nymphs
(Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1983), p. 21.
9. Plotinus, Enneads 1.viii.14, trans. E. R. Dodds, Select Passages Illustrating
Neoplatonism (Chicago: Ares Publishing, 1923), pp. 80–​81.
10. Ibid.
11. Cave of the Nymphs 61, trans. Lamberton, p. 25.
12. Cave of the Nymphs 62, trans. Lamberton, p. 26.
13. Cave of the Nymphs 64, trans. Lamberton, p. 28.
14. Ibid.
15. Cave of the Nymphs 78, trans. Lamberton, p. 38.
16. Cave of the Nymphs 81, trans. Lamberton, p. 40.
17. Porphyry did not deny the existence of the cave; in fact, he asserted that it existed.
See Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths, p. 84.
18. Cave of the Nymphs 76, trans. Lamberton, p. 37.
19. Tabula Cebetis 1–​2, ed. and trans. John T. Fitzgerald and Michael White, The Tabula
of Cebes (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), p. 61.
20. Plato, Phaedrus 246A, trans. Hackforth, p. 69.
21. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 193), p. 45.
22. Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1964), p. 151.
23. For an excellent study of the life and thought of Martianus, see Danuta Shanzer,
A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1986).
24. Lewis, Allegory of Love, p. 79.
25. Martianus Capella, The Marriage 2.165, trans. William Harris Stahl, in Martianus
Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press,
1971), p. 55.
26. The Marriage 2.174–​76, trans. Stahl, pp. 56–​57.
27. The Marriage 2.181, trans. Stahl, p. 57.
28. The Marriage 2.135, trans. Stahl, pp. 47–​48.
29. Ibid.
30. See Robert Lamberton, Proclus the Successor on Poetics and the Homeric Poems
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), p. xxiii. Lamberton notes that
he treats the same subjects in his commentary on the Timaeus and in his work
Platonic Theology.
31. Konstan in H.P., ed. Russell and Konstan, p. xxiii.
32. I paraphrase the helpful schema laid out by Robert Lamberton, Proclus the Successor,
pp. xxi–​iii, but in reverse order. See the translation, pp. 259–​61.
33. Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Republic 1.40.4–​6, translated in Lamberton, Homer
the Theologian, pp. 172–​73.
186
186â•…
notes to pages 145–153
34. Proclus, Commentary on the Republic 1.77, translated in Homeric Problems, ed.
Russell and Konstan, p. xxiii.
Chapter 12
1. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, p. 91, points out that “Longinus,” author of On the
Sublime, was the first Greek to quote from Jewish scripture (first century c.e.).
2. On this subject one can do no better than read Henri Marrou’s A History of
Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956),
especially part III.
3. See Boys-╉Stones, Post-╉Hellenistic Philosophy, especially Â�chapter 6, “The Authority of
Plato and Primitive Wisdom,” pp. 99–╉122.
4. Cited from Boys-╉Stones, Post-╉Hellenistic Philosophy, p. 107.
5. For a detailed account of the variations of the “dependency theme,” see Boys-╉
Stones, Post-╉Hellenistic Philosophy, Â�chapter 9, pp. 176–╉202.
6. Boys-╉Stones, Post-╉Hellenistic Philosophy, pp. 184–╉88.
7. Jaroslav Pelikan, What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?: Timaeus and Genesis in
Counterpoint (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 2.
8. See the articles by Henri Marrou and Pierre Courcelle in Arnoldo Momigliano, ed.,
The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
9. This is expressed most clearly in Plutarch’s On the Face of the Moon. See Dillon, The
Middle Platonists, pp. 208–╉11.
10. See Kempe Algra, “Stoic Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, ed.
Brad Inwood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 152–╉78, at
pp. 74–╉76.
11. See Stephen Butler Murray: Reclaiming Divine Wrath: A History of a Christian
Doctrine and Its Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, and New York: Peter
Lang, 2011), especially Â�chapter 2, pp. 47–╉65.
12. Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 51. It is rather unfortunate that this ancient debate
was not referenced in Dawkins’s book.
13. See the clever defense of the doctrine of bodily resurrection by Augustine, City of
God, book 13, Â�chapters 17–╉19, in which Plato is used to refute Plato.
14. For a comprehensive picture of his life, writings, and ideas see Dillon, The Middle
Platonists, pp. 139–╉83.
15. Philo, On Providence 2.40–╉41, trans. in Lamberton, Homer the Theologian, p. 50.
16. Philo, On the Creation 54, trans. C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), p. 22.
17. Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 1.6, ed. and trans. Ralph Marcus, LCL
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 4–╉5. Marcus’s translation is
from the Armenian.
18. See Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, pp. 41–╉57.
19. See Pelikan, What Has Athens to do with Jerusalem?, pp. 25–╉26.
20. Philo, On the Creation of the World 4.18, trans. Yonge, p. 4; cf. Plato, Tim. 29.
21. Boys-╉Stones, Post-╉Hellenistic Philosophy, pp. 90–╉95, emphasizes Philo’s debt to the
Stoic tradition, and notes passages where Philo considers Greek learning inferior
to Jewish. But one cannot fail to be impressed by Philo’s reverence for Plato’s theory
187
notes to pages 153–162
187
of ideas and his insistence that Plato’s teachings are congruent with the Torah in
the opening pages of On the Creation of the World.
22. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom, pp. 115–​16.
23. Philo, On the Creation of the World 14.43–​4 4, trans. Yonge, p. 7.
24. Origen, On First Principles 4.3.1, trans. Rowan A. Greer (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1979), p. 189.
25. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.42 ad fin., trans. Owen Chadwick (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 139–​40.
26. Ibid.
27. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.17, trans. Chadwick, p. 19.
28. Origen, On First Principles 4.3.4, trans. Greer, p. 192.
29. On First Principles 4.3.1, trans. Greer, p. 189.
30. On First Principles 4.3.2, trans. Greer, p. 190.
31. On First Principles 4.2.4, trans. Greer, p. 182.
32. See the detailed exposé and critique of this development by Henri de Lubac,
Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l’écriture, vol. 1 (Lyon: Aubier, 1959), pp.
198–​219.
33. Augustine, Confessions 1.14.
34. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.12 (17), trans. Robertson, p. 45.
35. For Clement and the classics, see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural
Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of
California Press, 1992), pp. 199–​205.
36. Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks, The Rich Man’s Salvation, To the Newly Baptized,
ed. and trans. G. W. Buttersworth. LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press; London: William Heinemann, 1982), pp. 51–​53.
37. Ibid.
38. Clement, Exhortation, trans. Buttersworth, p. 33.
39. Exhortation, trans. Buttersworth, p. 65.
40. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.17 (27), trans. Robertson, pp. 53–​54.
41. On Christian Doctrine 2.40 (60), trans. Robertson, p. 75.
42. For Augustine’s possible debt to an Aristotelian concept of sign, see Karla
Pollmann, Doctrina Christiana: Untersuchungen zu den Anfängen der christlichen
Hermeneutik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Augustinus, De doctrina christiana (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag, 1996), pp. 195–​96.
43. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 1.2, trans. Robertson, pp. 8–​9.
44. On Christian Doctrine 2.10 (15), trans. Robertson, p. 43.
45. The distinction is discussed by David Dawson, “Sign Theory, Allegorical
Reading, and the Motions of the Soul in De doctrina christiana,” in De doctrina
christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela
Bright (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp.
123–​41.
46. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 3.10 (14), trans. Robertson, pp. 87–​88.
47. On Christian Doctrine 3.22 (32), trans. Robertson, p. 98.
48. Augustine, On the City of God 13.21, trans. Bettenson, p. 535.
49. On the City of God 1.14, trans. Bettenson, pp. 23–​24.
188
188â•…
notes to pages 166 –169
Chapter 13
1. See the complaint of Cassiodorus in the preface to book 1 of his Divine and Human
Readings, trans. Leslie Webber Jones, in An Introduction to Divine and Human
Readings by Cassiodorus Senator (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), p. 67.
2. Pelagius, “Letter to Demetrias” 16.1, trans. B. R. Rees, in The Letters of Pelagius and
His Followers (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1991), p. 227.
3. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 1.39, trans. Robertson, p. 32.
4. On Christian Doctrine, book 1, chapter
�
36, trans. Robertson, p. 40.
5. Augustine, City of God, book 15, Â�chapters 22–╉23, trans. Bettenson.
6. There have a number of important studies of the interpretation of classical myths
in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance; however, much remains to be done for
the period between ca. 500 and the early twelfth century. For a sketch of the history of the post-╉classical myth exegesis in the Middle Ages, see Herren, “Classical
Exegesis” (cit. Preface, n. 1), especially pp. 88–╉95. I am planning a book-╉length
study of this development up to and including the twelfth century.
189
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Glossary of Names and Terms
Academy: School of philosophy founded by Plato (see) at Athens.
Achaeans: Name of people from region of Achaea, generalized to mean “Greeks” by
Homer. Also used in Egyptian sources as a name for the Greeks.
Achilles: Greek warrior at Troy, hero of Homer’s Iliad. Famous for his strength and
bravery, but also for his impetuosity.
Aeneas: Trojan warrior who appears in the Iliad. Refashioned by Vergil (see) as hero of
the epic Aeneid, founder of the future Rome.
Aeneid: Latin epic poem by Vergil (see). Deals with the escape of the Trojan remnant
from Troy, dangers encountered on their wanderings, the romance of Aeneas and
Phoenician queen Dido, and the long war in Italy ending in Trojan victory and
settlement in the future Rome.
Aesopian fable: Type of fable in which animals are given human characteristics, leading to a moral or generalization about human character. Origin ascribed to Aesop
of Samos (6th century b.c.e.).
Agamemnon: King of the Achaeans (see), leader of the Greek expedition against Troy
in the Iliad. See also Trojan War.
Alexander the Great (356–​323 b.c.e.): Son of Philip II, king of Macedon. Tutored by
Aristotle (see). Liberated the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Persian rule as well
as cities of the Levant and Egypt, finally smashing the Persian Empire itself.
Alexander’s conquests extended into India. In 331 he founded Alexandria.
allegoresis: Modern literary term signifying the interpretation of a work as allegorically composed. Introduced to distinguish between act of writing allegory and
that of judging works to be composed allegorically (interpretation); see allegory.
200
200
glossary of names and terms
allegory: “To say or mean something different,” i.e., from what one appears to be saying. Term applied in antiquity both to the writing of an allegory and interpretation
of a work as allegory. See also allegoresis, hyponoia.
Amazons: Legendary female warriors living around the Black Sea. They are connected
to the sagas of important heroes, including Hercules, Theseus, and the mythicized Alexander.
Ammonius Saccas (3rd century c.e.): Teacher of Origen (see) and Plotinus (see) at
Alexandria and generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism (see).
anankē: Literally, “necessity”; by extension refers to the laws of nature or nature itself
in the writings of the physical philosophers.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (ca. 500–​ca. 428 b.c.e.): Educated in Ionia, migrated to
Athens, where he taught philosophy. Hypothesized that all things existed in a
jumble in the beginning, becoming separated when Mind disassociated itself and
instigated the cosmic whirl. Charged and convicted as atheos (see), but escaped
punishment.
Anaximander (b. 610 b.c.e.): Successor to Thales (see) as head of the Milesian school
(see); authored the notion of the apeiron (see); also held evolutionist notions of the
origin of humans and animals.
Anaximenes (6th century b.c.e.): Successor to Anaximander (see) in Miletus; reverted
to the monism of Thales. Posited air as the archē; even the gods are made of air
and come from air.
Antisthenes (ca. 455–​
ca. 360 c.e.): Disciple of Socrates. Regarded as founder of
Cynicism (see Cynicism, philosophical). Believed etymology an important tool
for understanding philosophical truths.
apathēs: Literally, “without suffering.” Concept frequently applied to God or the gods,
who, being immutable, do not experience emotions, particularly anger.
apeiron: Literally, “without limit, boundless.” Used as a noun by Anaximander to designate an infinite undefined material substance out of which all things are made.
Aphrodite (Venus): In mythology, goddess responsible for inciting sexual desire.
According to Hesiod, she was born of the foam (aphros) spilling from the severed
penis of Ouranos.
apocryphal: From a Greek word meaning “hidden” or “obscure.” Term used to reference literature not sanctioned by the Jewish community or by Christians.
Apollo: In mythology, son of Zeus and Latona; god associated with the arts (particularly music and lyre playing), prophecy, archery, and medicine. Epithet Phoebus
associates him with the sun.
apologist/​apologete: One who defends a particular philosophical or religious movement from its attackers; term frequently applied to defenders of Christianity
against pagan attacks.
201
glossary of names and terms
201
Apuleius (2nd century c.e.): North African novelist and philosopher; author of the
novel Metamorphoses (aka The Golden Ass) and treatises on Platonism.
archē: First principle or origin of things that exist. The Ionian philosophers (see) posited a single element (water, air, fire) as the archē in the belief that everything was
reducible to one substance. See also monism.
Ares (Mars): In mythology, the god of war.
Aristobulus of Panaeas (2nd century b.c.e.): Jewish Platonist philosopher at Alexandria,
who interpreted the scriptures allegorically.
Aristophanes (450–​ca. 385 b.c.e.): Athenian playwright, who wrote satirical plays on
topical issues such as Athenian politics, religious beliefs, and literary criticism.
Aristotle (383–​322 b.c.e.): Philosopher. B. Macedon, served as tutor to Alexander the
Great. Studied with Plato, later founded the school of Peripatetic philosophy (see
Peripatetics). Wrote treatises on ethics, politics, poetics, rhetoric, logic, biology,
physics, astronomy, metaphysics, and psychology, setting the parameters of these
subjects for the ancient and medieval worlds.
asebeia: “Impiety”; show of disrespect to religious images or rituals. Punishable by
death in Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries c.e.
asōmaton: Literally, “without a body.” Term designates nonmaterial substances such as
numbers.
ataraxia: “Without perturbation, calmness.” Describes the Epicurean ideal of happiness: freedom from pain in the body and in the soul. See Epicureanism.
Athena: In mythology, goddess born from head of Zeus. Connected to warfare, but
also to wisdom and the arts and crafts. Allegorized as reason (logos) by Porphyry
(see) and others.
atheos: Literally, “without god, godless.” In antiquity, applied to a range of beliefs and
attitudes, including disbelief in mythology and acceptance of natural causes for
phenomena to the exclusion of the divine or supernatural.
atomism: Greek theory that matter is composed of invisible particles called “atoms”
(see atomos) that move in the void and collide with one another to form objects.
Atoms are eternal, and there is an infinite number of worlds.
atomos: Literally, “without cutting.” In Greek atomic theory, refers to the smallest unit
of matter, which cannot be divided further.
Augustine, St. (354–​430 c.e.): Philosopher and Christian theologian. Born and educated in North Africa, taught rhetoric in Rome and Milan; later bishop of Hippo
Regius (Algeria). Made important contributions to sign theory and biblical exegesis. Defined Christian orthodoxy for the Latin West.
Babylonian Creation Story/​Enuma Elish: “When on High.”. Work describing the origin of existence in the sluggish watery principles Tiamat (female) and Apsu
202
202
glossary of names and terms
(male). They were overthrown by the god Marduk, who created the cosmos out
of the carcass of Tiamat, then made the first humans from the body of Tiamat’s
vizier, Kingu.
Basil of Caesarea, St. (ca. 330–​379 c.e.): Monastic founder and theologian. B. Caesarea
in Cappadocia (Turkey), later bishop there. Exegesis of scripture favors figurative interpretation. Author of “Address to Young Men on How They Might Derive
Benefit from Greek Literature.”
Berkeley, George (1685–​1753 c.e.): Anglo-​Irish philosopher who professed “immaterialism,” which holds that in order for something to exist it must be perceived.
Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–​1375 c.e.): Italian humanist; wrote treatise On the Genealogy
of the Gods, which defends pagan poetry on the ground that it is composed as
allegory (see).
Cadmus: In mythology, son of the Phoenician king Agenor. Slew a serpent that was
the offspring of Ares (see); sowed its teeth on the advice of Athena (see). From
them sprang the “Sown Men,” who fought one another, leaving only five survivors, who became founders of Thebes. Cadmus said to have introduced writing
from Phoenicia to Greece.
Callimachus (ca. 305–​ca. 240 b.c.e.): Poet and literary critic active at Alexandria. To
him is ascribed the saying “a big book is a big evil.”
Celsus (2nd century c.e.): Anti-​Christian polemicist rebutted by Origen in Against
Celsus. C. influenced by Platonism and the Stoic idea of an original wisdom.
centaurs: Mythical creatures comprising the heads and torsos of men and the bodies
of horses.
Chaos/​chaos: One of Hesiod’s first “gods” to come into being. Name probably means the
“gap”—​the space needed to enable things to move. Later meanings are “jumble”
or “confusion.”
Cicero (106–​43 b.c.e.): Roman orator, politician, and philosopher. Wrote treatises summarizing earlier Greek philosophical positions and preserving portions of writings now lost.
Chrysippus (ca. 280–​207 b.c.e.): Stoic philosopher; succeeded Cleanthes (see) as head
of the school. Credited with elaborating earlier Stoic doctrine, especially with
regard to logic and theory of knowledge. Established Stoic orthodoxy.
Cleanthes (331–​232 b.c.e.): Stoic philosopher; succeeded Zeno (see) as head of school.
Laid special stress on ethics. Regarded the world (cosmos) as a living being and
the sun as its ruler.
Clement of Alexandria (2nd century c.e.): Christian theologian and apologist. Wrote
a treatise addressed to pagans on the foolishness of pagan beliefs. His Stromata
aimed at synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian teaching.
Commentaries on the Dream of Scipio: Work by Macrobius (see). Neoplatonist compendium of myth criticism, dream interpretation, soul theory, astronomy, and music
theory.
203
glossary of names and terms
203
Cornutus (1st century c.e.): Philosopher and literary scholar. Born in Libya, active in
Rome, wrote in both Greek and Latin. Preserved Stoic tradition of myth interpretation in his Epidrome (“Summary of Traditions according to Greek Theology”).
Cratylus (5th century b.c.e.): Contemporary of Socrates. Ascribed the theory that words
are linked to their referents by natural association, so that one can infer the meaning of a word from its sound.
creationism: The doctrine, both ancient and modern, that a god or supernatural being
created the world (universe).
Critias (ca. 460–​403 b.c.e.): Athenian politician and playwright. Ascribed the satyr
play Sisyphus, which contains an explanation of the origin of the gods as bogeys
invented by a statesman to instill fear in the citizens.
Cyclops: In mythology, monstrous humanoid with a single eye in the middle of the
forehead; reputed for cannibalism and lawlessness in Odyssey 9.
Cynicism, philosophical: Not a school, but a loosely organized sect. Most famous exponent was Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 400–​ca. 325 b.c.e.), who preached that happiness
attained by limiting desires to the most basic needs. Ideal of life is attainment of
self-​sufficiency (autarkeia).
Daedalus: In mythology, the master craftsman of Crete (name connected to Greek
adjective meaning “skillfully wrought”). In the Theseus saga, D. the architect of
the labyrinth and builder of wooden cow used by Pasiphaë. Credited with many
inventions. Also made wings to enable human flight.
daimōn: Greek word for god, sometimes synonymous with theos (see), at other times
indicating lower divinities, or intermediaries between gods and mortals. Can
be benign or malicious; note Christian treatment of daimōn as an evil being—​
whence “demon.”
Danaans: Greek-​speaking tribe of uncertain location. Homer uses name in alternation
with Achaeans (see) and Argives to refer to the Greeks who fought at Troy; also
used in Vergil’s Aeneid.
Dark Age: Period from the end of the literate Mycenaean Age (ca. 1100 b.c.e.) to the 8th
century b.c.e., when evidence for Greek literacy recommences (though in a different form). What is known of the age is derived from physical remains.
Demeter: Goddess of fertility. In mythology, mother of Persephone (Proserpina) (see),
married to Hades.
Demetrius Phalereus (4th century b.c.e.): Author and politician active in Athens, later
librarian at Alexandria. Wrote literary critical essays and collections of proverbs
and myths.
demiourgos: Plato’s term for the creator who first designed the cosmos according to the
forms, then created a physical world that accords with the design.
Democritus (ca. 470–​ca. 380 b.c.e.): Atomist philosopher. B. Abdera (Thrace), active
in Athens; student, then colleague of atomist Leucippus. Posited only two substances: atoms and the void, both eternal, and argued that everything happened
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glossary of names and terms
according to anankē (see). Taught that the number of worlds generated by the
cosmic whirl was infinite.
Deucalion and Pyrrha: Couple that restarted the human race after the cataclysm decreed
by the gods destroyed humankind; story reported in Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.
Diagoras of Melos (5th century b.c.e.): Lyric poet. Reputed for atheism, tried and convicted at Athens, but fled, thus escaping death.
Dike/​dikē: “Justice”: god (personification) of justice in the Theogony.
Dio Chrysostom (40 c.e.–​112 or later): Greek philosopher, orator, and literary critic. His
philosophy, based on Stoicism (see) and Cynicism (see), was of a practical nature.
Diodorus of Sicily (1st century b.c.e.–​ca. 21 c.e.): Historian. Wrote a world history
beginning with ancient Egypt to his own day, using mostly Greek plus a few
Roman sources.
Diogenes Laertius (3rd century c.e.): Author of The Lives of the Philosophers, which covers the lives and thought of ancient philosophers from Thales to Epicurus.
doxa: “Opinion,” from Greek verb “to seem.” Plato contrasts doxa with epistēmē, “true
knowledge” (see). Regarding the material world, one can have only doxa, as its
objects are in constant flux.
dualism: Hypothesis going back to Plato that there are two levels of reality: the ideal
and the material. Opposed to monism (definition 2) (see).
Eleatics: School of philosophy in southern Italy founded by Parmenides (see). Preferred
logical proofs to sense knowledge for establishing metaphysical propositions. See
metaphysics.
Eleusinian mysteries: Yearly ritual in honor of Demeter (see) and Persephone (see).
The ceremonies, involving initiation into the cult of the goddesses, were regarded
as mysteries, and were supposed to be kept secret on pain of a charge of impiety.
Elysian Fields/​E lysium: Abode of dead heroes and righteous souls. Set in Homer’s
Odyssey 4 at the edge of Ocean; in Vergil’s Aeneid 6 it was incorporated into Hades
as a separate part. Also equated with the Isles or Isle of the Blest.
Empedocles (ca. 493–​ca. 433 b.c.e.): B. Acragas (now Agrigento, Sicily); after exile,
lived on the Peloponnese. Accepted earth, air, fire, and water as “roots” of being.
Posited love (erōs) and strife (eris) as causes of motion and change. Held evolutionist notions (see evolution) regarding origin and survival of animals. Professed
transmigration of souls.
Enuma Elish: See Babylonian Creation Story.
Epicureanism (aka the Garden): School founded by Epicurus (see). Ethical philosophy positing pleasure (hēdonē) as aim of life. Pleasure defined negatively as
freedom from disturbance in body and soul; positively, as pursuit of philosophy
and friendship. No need to fear death, as dispersal of soul’s atoms marks end of
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glossary of names and terms
205
consciousness; there is no afterlife. Gods exist, but have no care for humans. E.’s
ethical theory grounded in atomism (see).
Epicurus (341–​270 b.c.e.): Founder of Epicurean school of philosophy (see
Epicureanism) at Athens. Regarded as atheos, but not prosecuted.
epistēmē: “Knowledge”; for Plato the objects of epistēmē were the ideas/​forms (see); the
sensible world was not knowable in the true sense, as it was constantly changing.
Eris/​eris: “Strife”; a god in Hesiod’s Theogony, cosmic principle in the teachings of
Heraclitus.
Eros/​erōs: “Sexual desire”; third of the divine beings to come into existence in the
Theogony. Adopted as a cosmic principle as counterpoint to eris by Empedocles (see).
etiology: “Account of the origin.” Applied to myths and legends that purport to explain
how things came into being or why things are done in a certain way.
etymology: Investigation of the root meaning of a word or name; applied as an aid to
allegorical interpretation to uncover the meaning of a myth.
Euclid ( fl. ca. 300 b.c.e.): Greek mathematician active in Alexandria, best known for
his work in geometry.
euhemerism: Named after Euhemerus (see). Method of interpreting myths and legends in a rationalistic manner, for example, by reducing gods to human proportions, or monsters to ordinary animals.
Euhemerus (3rd century b.c.e.): Author of a utopian travel novel entitled the Sacred
Scripture. Taught that gods were originally great kings and benefactors deified
after death. E. regarded as atheos (see) in antiquity.
Euripides (ca. 485–​406 b.c.e.): Tragic playwright active in Athens. Work characterized
by a cynical outlook on the doings of the gods and their interactions with humans.
Accused of atheism, E. fled Athens and died in exile.
evolutionism, Greek: Theory of natural origins, opposed to creationism (see). Examples
include Hesiod’s notion that first beings simply “happened,” Anaximander’s idea
of origin of living things from moisture enclosed in bark, Xenophanes’ deductions from fossils, and Empedocles’ theories that simple organisms develop into
more complex ones and those animals survive that adapt best.
exegesis: Word derived from Greek meaning “interpretation.”
Gaia/​gaia: “The earth.” One of the first three gods to “come into being,” according to
Hesiod. At first G. produced natural phenomena by herself, then with Ouranos
(see) after mating with him.
Galen (ca. 130–​199 c.e.): Greek medical writer and philosopher; physician to Emperor
Marcus Aurelius. Writings show commitment to empiricism based on dissections. Though a monotheist, G. believed that god’s power limited by the laws of
nature.
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Genesis, Book of: The first book of the Torah or Pentateuch. Describes creation of
the cosmos, creation and fall of mankind, the primeval flood, and beginnings of
civilized life.
Gilgamesh: Ancient Sumerian writing dating from third millennium b.c.e. Deals
with existential issues such as search for immortality and need to accept death
as inevitable. Description of “existence” of the dead not unlike that of Hades in
the Odyssey.
Golden Age: Motif of an age at beginning of time when humans lived a life of ease
and bliss.
golden bough: In mythology, a branch with golden leaves needed to gain entrance to
the underworld.
Hades: God of the underworld; also the underworld itself, the abode of all the dead,
good and bad alike, who receive burial. See also shades, Tartarus, Isles of the
Blest, and Elysian Fields.
Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 500 b.c.e.): Geographer, genealogist, and logographer (collector of myths). His treatment of myths is generally skeptical.
Helios/​helios: In mythology, the sun god, the sun itself. In Plato’s “Allegory of the
Cave,” used as a symbol of the Good; in Stoic cosmology, serves as ruler of the
cosmos. As “eye of the sky,” equated with justice.
Hellanicus of Mytilene (5th century b.c.e.): Wrote on myths and early history, including the history of cities.
Hellene: Name of the entire nation of Greeks. Originally designated a local region and
tribe like Achaeans, Argives, etc.
Hellenistic period: Time frame from the death of Alexander the Great (see) in 323
b.c.e. to the Roman conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt in 31 b.c.e.
Hephaestus (Vulcan): In mythology, god of fire, the forge, and technology. Son of Zeus
and Hera, portrayed as lame and awkward. Name used as a metonymy for fire
beginning with Homer.
Hera (Juno): Daughter of Kronos and Rhea, sister and last wife of Zeus. Associated
with marriage, the family, and childbirth. As Hera, allegorized as the air; as Juno,
“she who helps.”
Heracles (Hercules): “Glory of Hera.” Most famous of the pre–​Trojan War Greek
heroes. Renowned for the twelve labors performed for King Eurystheus. Homer
places him with the gods on Olympus, leaving an image of his shade in Hades.
Heraclitus of Ephesus ( fl. ca. 500 b.c.e.): Monist (see monism) philosopher who posited eternal fire as the ultimate substance. Taught that universe not created and
all things happen by strife and necessity. Things are in constant flux, but cosmic
order is provided by the logos. The logos is available to all, but most people act
according to private understanding.
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glossary of names and terms
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Heraclitus the Younger (2nd century c.e.?): Grammarian and philosopher. Defended
Homer against critics, declaring that Homer composed allegorically; influenced
by Stoicism. See also Homeric Problems.
hermeneutics: Discipline that deals with theory of interpretation.
Hermes (Mercury): In mythology, son of Zeus and Maia. In Homer, Hermes functions
as messenger of the gods and guide of souls (Od. 24). Associated with speech and
eloquence.
Herodorus ( fl. ca. 400 b.c.e.): Greek mythographer. Author of a life of Heracles, lost
except for a few fragments.
Herodotus (ca. 485–​
ca. 425 c.e.): Greek historian. B. Halicarnassus, active at
Athens. Traveled to Egypt, Ionia (see), and the Middle East. History covers
events from Trojan War to Xerxes’ campaign in Greece (479 b.c.e.); includes
much ethnographical commentary. Attitude toward religion and myth tinged
by skepticism.
Hesiod (8th century?, 7th century? b.c.e.): Epic poet; author of the Theogony and the
Works and Days. The first work gives the origin of the cosmos, the natural world,
and the gods. The second has a catalogue of the different generations of humans
and the myth of Pandora’s box.
Hexapla: Edition made by Origen (see) of the Old Testament in six versions, including
versions in Hebrew and Greek.
Hipparchus (2nd century c.e.): Greek astronomer. B. Nicaea (modern Turkey).
Improved estimates of the distances of sun and moon from earth, and approached
modern calculation of the solar year. H. first astronomer known to have employed
trigonometry for calculations.
historia: Term meaning “enquiry, investigation.” Developed the meaning “history” in
the modern sense, because history is an enquiry into the past.
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–​1679): English moral and political philosopher. In Leviathan
H. developed the theory of the social contract.
Homer (8th century b.c.e.): Epic poet, traditionally regarded as author of both the Iliad
and the Odyssey. Reputed that he was from Ionia and blind. Modern scholarship
inclines to theory that H. composed orally (see oral composition).
Homeric Hymns: Hymns attributed to the Homeridae (“sons of Homer”) composed
in epic meter in honor of individual gods, probably in the 7th and 6th centuries
b.c.e. The Hymns are a rich source for the mythology of the gods.
Homeric Problems: Work by Heraclitus the Younger (see). Heraclitus claimed that
Homer composed allegorically. Applied substitutionist allegory to “problematic
passages” in Homer’s work.
hubris: “Insolence, arrogance.” Used in situations in which a person of humble station
insults a superior or, more often, when a mortal commits affrontery against a god.
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hylē: Literally, “wood.” Term used by Aristotle and practically all subsequent philosophers to signify matter.
hyponoia: Literally, “the sense beneath.” Plato’s term for allegory (see) applied to both
composition and interpretation.
ideas/​forms, theory of: Plato’s concept of eternal, nonsensible patterns of existent
things that are knowable only to the mind. They can be likened to numbers and
geometrical forms, but embrace all being. Ideas are the object of epistēmē, “true
knowledge” (see).
Iliad: Epic poem ascribed to Homer (see). Deals with events of the tenth year of the
Trojan War (see). Narrative focused on the hero Achilles (see).
inspiration, Greek: Notion that a muse or god inspires the work of a poet. Belief in
inspiration varied between skepticism (Hesiod) and acceptance (Homer in “historical” passages). Later writers understood the notion as a literary convention.
Ionians: Writers and intellectuals inhabiting Greek colonies along the western coast of
Asia Minor (Turkey), including Miletus, Ephesus, Halicarnassus, and Colophon.
Thought characterized as materialist and empirical, in contrast to the Eleatics
(see). See also Milesians.
Isle(s) of the Blest: See Elysian Fields.
Jason: Pre–​Trojan War hero. Famous for his voyage with the Argonauts and capture of
the Golden Fleece.
Jerome, St. (348–​420 c.e.): Biblical scholar and theologian. B. Dalmatia (modern
Croatia), studied in Rome, retired to monastery in Bethlehem. Besides translating
the Vulgate (see), translated and updated Eusebius’s Chronicle; wrote numerous
letters, treatises, and biblical commentaries.
Julian, emperor (reigned 361–​363 c.e.): Known to Christians as “the Apostate” because
he had accepted baptism and then, as emperor, attempted to restore pagan practices abolished by Constantine and successors. Treatise Against the Galileans contains rationalist critique of biblical accounts.
Juno: See Hera.
Jupiter: See Zeus.
Justin Martyr (2nd century c.e.): Christian apologist. Like others of his time (Philo,
Origen, Clement of Alexandria) taught that Christianity was compatible with
Platonism.
Justinian, emperor in the East (reigned 527–​565 c.e.): Closed the Academy because of
reputed pagan practices. Attempted unsuccessfully to regain Italy for the Empire.
Codified Roman law (the Digest, Pandects) and erected the church of Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople.
katabasis: Literally, “a going down, descent”; motif of the descent of a living hero
into Hades.
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glossary of names and terms
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kleos: “Fame, renown.” Homer used word in the sense of “rumor” or “opinion.”
Kronos (Saturn): In mythology, Titan son of Ouranos and Gaia, father of the Olympian
gods. According to Hesiod, castrated his father and devoured his children. K. presided over the Golden Age; defeated by Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus (see).
Etymologized as chronos (“time”).
Lactantius ( fl. ca. 300 c.e.): Christian theologian, active in North Africa. Wrote the
Divine Institutes, the first summary of Christian theology in Latin, and On the
Wrath of God, discussing whether the divine nature can be affected.
Leucippus ( fl. ca. 440 b.c.e.): Atomist philosopher. With Democritus (see) devised the
Greek theory of atomism (see). Taught that nothing happens randomly, but all
things due to necessity.
Linear B: Syllabary used in Mycenaean centers that was shown to contain the Greek
language. It was deciphered by Michael Ventris in the 1950s.
logographic system: Writing system that employs pictographs such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or Mandarin Chinese. See also syllabary.
logographer: Term applied to collector of myths, legends, and genealogies.
logos: Term with range of meanings including “word” and “myth.” Used by Heraclitus
and later the Stoics to mean the rational element embedded in the cosmos, which
is also accessible to humans. Appropriated by Christians and applied to Christ as
the Word (logos) of God.
Longinus: Name traditionally given to the author of On the Sublime, one of the most
important works of literary criticism from antiquity.
Lucilius Balbus: Relatively unknown Roman who serves as spokesperson for Stoic
teachings about the gods in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods.
Lucretius (95– ​55 b.c.e.): Roman poet and philosopher. Work On the Nature of
Things based on teachings of Epicurus (see), but more extreme in opposition
to religion. All things for L. were material, including the soul, which dissolves at death. Dismissive of mythology, L. denied the existence of centaurs
and Hades.
Macrobius ( fl. ca. 400): Latin grammarian and philosopher. Wrote Saturnalia, a piece
of symposium literature dealing with literary criticism and antiquarian lore, and
the Commentaries on the Dream of Scipio (see).
Marriage of Philology and Mercury: Work by Martianus Capella (see). Written in mixture of prose and verse, an encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts preceded by two
books of allegory describing courtship and marriage of Mercury (eloquence) and
Philology (erudition).
Mars: See Ares.
Martianus Capella (5th century c.e.): Encyclopedist, active at Carthage, author of The
Marriage of Philology and Mercury (see).
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Medusa: In Greek mythology, one of the three Gorgons, female monsters with snakes
for hair, huge wings, and eyes that can turn persons into stone.
Memory: See Mnemosyne.
Mercury: See Hermes.
metaphysics: The part of philosophy that purports to deal with questions relating to
being and reality, including principles of causation. Parameters fully developed
in Aristotle’s (see) Metaphysics.
Metis/​mētis: “Counsel.” In Theogony, married to Zeus, who swallowed her and produced Athena (see) from his forehead.
metonomy: Figure of speech involving substitution of one name by another. Often
entailed use of a god’s name thing with which god was associated, e.g., Hephaestus
for fire, Bacchus for wine.
Metrodorus of Lampsacus (5th century b.c.e.): Grammarian (?). Allegorized the gods
and heroes of Homer’s works; not to be confused with a younger Metrodorus of
Lampsacus, an Epicurean.
Milesian tale: Scurrilous story, erotically tinged, with numerous plot twists. Name
owed to the Milisiaca of Aristides of Miletus (2nd century b.c.e.).
Milesians: The school of philosophy and science founded at Miletus by Thales (see).
Associated with search for the archē (see).
mimēsis: “Imitation, representation.” Process used in art and literature of rendering a
subject as lifelike as possible.
Minos: Legendary king of Crete. In mythology, the son of Zeus and Europa; figures
prominently in the story of Theseus (see) and the labyrinth. In later tradition, a
judge of the dead.
Minotaur: Mythological monster comprising the head of a bull and body of a man.
Figures prominently in the Theseus (see) legend.
Mnemosyne/​mnemosynē: Goddess (personification) of memory, memory itself.” In
Theogony, married to Zeus; together they produced the nine Muses (see).
monism: (1) Hypothesis that everything that exists can be reduced to a single element
that also acts as a cause; (2) hypothesis that matter is the only substance; nonmaterial substances do not exist; opposed to dualism (see).
monotheism: The worship in one God/​god to the exclusion of all others. Differs from
Greek polytheism, which acknowledged a “greatest god” (Zeus), but allowed for
worship of others.
Moses: Biblical leader of the Jews who rescued his people from captivity in Egypt and
led them to the Promised Land. Regarded by Jews and Christians, well into the
Middle Ages, if not later, as author of the Torah (Pentateuch) .
Muses: The nine daughters of Zeus and Memory (Mnemosyne), who inspire the arts
and sciences and collectively preserve the memory of human accomplishment.
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Mycenaean Age: Period extending roughly from 1600 to 1100 b.c.e. Its records in
Linear B (see) show that inhabitants of Mycenae and other mainland citadels were
Greek speakers.
Neoplatonism: School of philosophy founded by Ammonius Saccas (see) at Alexandria.
Combined elements of Plato’s philosophy (drawing on Republic and Timaeus),
with Middle Platonic, Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic notions. Leading exponent was Plotinus (see).
Nicene Creed: Set of Christian doctrines requiring belief. First formulated at the
Council of Nicaea (325 c.e.), underwent revisions and additions in 4th century.
All versions teach that Christ is both God and man and that the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost are equally divine.
nomos: “Law,” “convention.” Not applied, at least originally, to a law that was unchangeable, e.g., “iron law of gravity,” but to laws that were arrived at by human assent.
Opposed to physis (see).
nous: “Mind.” Begins and directs the cosmic whirl in the cosmology of Anaxagoras
(see), though not identified with god. For both Plato (see) and Aristotle (see), the
rational part of the soul.
Ockham’s razor: Problem-​solving principle developed by William of Ockham (ca.
1287–​1347 c.e.), favoring selection of hypothesis that entails fewest assumptions.
Odysseus (Ulysses): Hero of Homer’s epic, the Odyssey; famed for cunning and
resourcefulness. Allegorized as the soul in Neoplatonist exegesis.
Odyssey: Epic poem ascribed to Homer (see). Describes Odysseus’s adventures and trials at sea after Trojan War (see), the fate of his companions, and events surrounding his homecoming. Rich in mythical material.
Oedipus: Legendary king of Thebes, subject of tragic plays, e.g., Sophocles’ Oedipus
Tyrannus. O. solved the riddle of the Sphinx, murdered his father, and married
his mother.
On the Sacred Disease: Greek medical writing of the 5th century b.c.e. Argues that
diseases had natural causes and were curable by natural methods (as opposed to,
say, incantations).
oral composition: Theory that epics ascribed to Homer (see) were composed orally,
passed on to reciters, and later recorded. Theory based on study of verbal patterns
(set phrases, repetitions) in poems and comparison with techniques of oral composition in present-​day societies.
Origen (ca. 185–​
254 c.e.): Biblical scholar, philosopher and theologian, active at
Alexandria. Applied Greek exegetical methods to study of the Bible, which
O. theorized in On Interpretation 4, and Against Celsus (see under Celsus). O. also
responsible for the Hexapla (see).
Orpheus: In mythology, singer who tamed animals with his beautiful voice. Attempted
to rescue his bride, Eurydice, from Hades (see katabasis), but failed. Regarded
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as a poet and religious thinker to whom writings were attributed and a cult
established.
Ouranos/​Uranus: God of the sky, the sky itself. Wedded to Gaia (Earth); father of the
Titans. Castrated and deposed by his son Kronos.
Ovid (43 b.c.e.–​17 c.e.): Roman poet. Active at Rome; exiled by Augustus to the Black
Sea. Most famous for the Metamorphoses, a collection of Greek and some Roman
myths grouped around the theme of transformation.
Panathenaia: Festival at Athens in honor of Athena, begun under the rule of Pisistratus
(see); consisted of games, sacrifices, and performances by rhapsodes (see).
Pandora: “All gifts,” name given to the first woman in Works and Days. Overcome by
curiosity, P. opened the forbidden chest (“Pandora’s box”) and released evils into
the world.
paradigm: Defined and discussed in the preface of this book, pp. viii–viii.
Parmenides (5th century b.c.e.): Founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy (see) in
southern Italy. Denied that things could change into other things, thereby rejecting the monism of the Milesians, who taught that all that exists comes out of a
single constitutive element.
Pausanias ( fl. ca. 150 c.e.): Greek geographer and ethnologist. Wrote a travelogue,
Descriptions of Greece. Though often skeptical, P. regarded monuments and other
physical objects as evidence that events happened as described.
Pelagius ( fl. ca. 400): Christian theologian, condemned as a heretic. Probably from
Britain, active in Rome and the East. Against Augustine (see) argued that God’s
grace was given equally to all in the form of a good nature and the gift of the law.
Pentateuch: Greek name for the first five books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).
Pericles (ca. 496–​429 b.c.e.): Athenian statesman and general. Known to have been
on friendly terms with the philosopher Anaxagoras and the playwright Sophocles.
Peripatetics (aka the Lyceum): School of philosophy founded by Aristotle (see) at
Athens. Emphasized scientific experiment combined with inductive method.
Pegasus: In mythology, name of winged horse that sprang from the neck of Medusa
after Perseus (see) severed her head.
Perseus: In mythology, slew the Gorgon Medusa (see) with aid of Athena; wore a magic
cap that made him invisible to Medusa’s sisters, who pursued him. Legend makes
him king of Tiryns.
Persephone (Proserpina): In mythology, daughter to Demeter (see), married to Hades
(see). Spent half the year above the earth united to her mother, the other half
below the earth in Hades.
Phaethon: In mythology, son of Helios and Clymene. Asked Helios to guide the sun’s
chariot for a day; unable to control the horses, crashed and set the earth on fire.
Killed by Zeus’s thunderbolt.
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glossary of names and terms
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Pherecydes of Athens ( fl. ca. 450 b.c.e.): Greek logographer (collector and synthesizer
of mythological material) and genealogist.
Pherecydes the Syrian ( fl. ca. 550 b.c.e.): Philosopher and mythographer. There is
some evidence that he was an early user of allegorical interpretation.
Philo Iudaeus (30 b.c.e.–​45 c.e.): Head of the Jewish community at Alexandria; wrote
widely on philosophical and religious topics. Exegesis of scripture shows influence of pagan Greek interpretative methods. In On Creation P. integrates the creation account of Genesis with Plato’s Timaeus and Stoic philosophy.
physis: “Nature, growth,” derived from the Greek verb phyō, “I beget,” “I cause to grow.”
The phrase “according to nature” means “the way things grow,” a fixed condition
that cannot be changed by supernatural interference.
Pindar (518–​438 b.c.e.): Greek lyric poet; his odes contain a great deal of mythological
material.
Pisistratus (reigned 560–​527 b.c.e.): Tyrant of Athens. Founder of the Panathenaia
(see) and patron of the compilation of a standard edition of Homer’s works.
plasma: “Fiction,” a term applied to myths; from a Greek verb meaning “to mould or
shape.”
Plato (ca. 429–​347 b.c.e.): Greek philosopher. B. Athens and active there. Influenced by
Socrates, P. cast writings in dialogue form, with each devoted to a central theme,
e.g., the Republic (see) to justice, the Symposium to love. Most enduring contribution the theory of ideas (see) or forms. In Timaeus (see) P. described creation of the
world according to the forms. Opposed the myths of the poets.
Plotinus (205–​
ca. 270 c.e.): Neoplatonist philosopher. Educated at Alexandria by
Ammonius Saccas (see); settled in Rome as teacher of philosophy. His Enneads
ranges over whole of philosophy. Central notion is idea of the One, the ground of
existence. Between the One and matter are the nous, the psychē (world spirit), and
physis (nature).
Plutarch (ca. 46–​ca. 120 c.e.): Greek historian, philosopher, and essayist. Studied in
Athens, active in Rome under Trajan. Wrote Parallel Lives, paired biographies of a
famous Greek with Roman counterpart, e.g., Alexander with Caesar. His essays,
Moralia, range over religion, myth, politics, literature, and education. Influenced
by Platonism.
polis: The Greek “city-​state.” Autonomous political units comprising a citadel (walled
town) and surrounding countryside with villages. Each polis had its own government and army and commanded the loyalty of its citizens.
Porphyry (ca. 232–​ca. 305 c.e.): Neoplatonic philosopher and scholar. B. Tyre (Palestine),
disciple of Plotinus (see) at Rome; edited his Enneads. Wrote history of early Greek
philosophy, life of Plotinus, commentaries on works of Plato and Aristotle. His
essay on “The Cave of the Nymphs” is a model of Neoplatonic myth exegesis.
Poseidon (Neptune): In mythology, brother of Zeus; god of the sea and of earthquakes.
prepōn, (to): “the fitting”; term applied in ethics and aesthetics.
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Presocratics: Term for Greek philosophers active before Socrates. Plato and Aristotle
were heavily dependent on their writings, though Aristotle in particular
criticized them.
Proclus (412–​485 c.e.): Neoplatonic philosopher. B. Constantinople, studied in
Alexandria; disciple, then head, of the Neoplatonist school at Athens. Wrote a
summary of Neoplatonism (see). P.’s Commentary on Plato’s Republic is an original
contribution to myth interpretation.
Prodicus of Ceos (5th century b.c.e.): Sophist, contemporary with Socrates. Posited
theory that the ancients call gods all the things that benefit them; also author of
allegory “Heracles at the Crossroads.”
Prometheus: In mythology, Titan son of Iapetus; rebelled against Zeus. Stole fire from
Zeus and gave it to mortals; for his offenses he was tied to a rock and suffered his
liver to be eaten daily by an eagle. In one tradition he is credited with the creation
of humans.
Proserpina: See Persephone.
prosopopoeia: “Personification.” A figure of speech used by writers to endow abstractions with human characteristics.
Protagoras (5th century b.c.e.): Sophist. B. Abdera, active probably at Athens. His dictum “man is the measure of all things” regarded as an endorsement of relativity
and a refusal to accept anything as absolute.
Proteus: In mythology, a daimōn shape shifter that will answer questions or prophesy if one can immobilize it when it shifts into its original shape; described in
Odyssey 4.
Prudentius (348–​after 405 c.e.): Christian Latin poet. B. Spain, later at Rome as court
official. Most famous poem the Psychomachia, an allegory of a battle between
personified virtues and vices.
psychē: Greek for “soul.” In Homer psyche refers to the shades (see) of the dead in
Hades (see). In Greek philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus, psyche refers to soul
of living person. Encompasses both mental and emotional aspects of the human
makeup; often identified with the self.
Ptolemy (ca. 100–​ca. 170 c.e.): Astronomer and geographer, active at Alexandria. His
work in astronomy includes a map of the constellations and predictions when
they would rise and set. His Geography includes maps of Europe and Asia, using
curved lines of latitude and longitude.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigned 283–​246 b.c.e.): King of Ptolemaic Egypt. Tradition
holds that the Septuagint (see) was undertaken under his patronage.
Pythagoras of Samos (6th century b.c.e.): Mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher active at Croton (southern Italy). Posited the theorem of the right triangle
and the numerical ratios of the intervals of the musical scale. Believed numbers to
be the principles of the cosmos. Apparently first Greek to posit a spherical earth.
Accepted notion of the transmigration of souls.
215
glossary of names and terms
215
Republic: Dialogue by Plato centered on definition of justice. Expands outward to
include discussion of the ideal society, the divisions of the soul, the theory of
ideas (see), and literature and art as related to mimēsis (see). The “Allegory of the
Cave” is used to illustrate the theory of ideas. P.’s censure of the myths of the poets
occurs in book 2.
rhapsode: Professional reciters of the works of Homer and other poets. They displayed
their talents at important festivals such as the Panathenaia (see).
Rhea: In mythology, Titan divinity, wife of Kronos, mother of Zeus and Z.’s siblings.
Saved Z. from being devoured by Kronos by substituting a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. After swallowing the stone Kronos disgorged the other children he
had consumed.
Sacred Scripture: Travel novel by Euhemerus (see) in which author claims to have seem
a golden pillar with an inscription listing the deeds of Ouranos, Kronos, and
Zeus. Because of the benefits they brought to men they were honored as gods
after their deaths.
Septuagint: “The Seventy.” Translation of the Old Testament into Greek at Alexandria,
allegedly under patronage of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Legend states that seventy scholars spent seventy days translating the Bible, and produced identical
translations—​to the last jot and tittle.
Sextus Empiricus (2nd century c.e.): Skeptic philosopher; wrote treatises outlining the
history and principles of philosophical Skepticism (see).
shade: A translation of Homer’s psyche, a wraith of the dead in Hades. Its consciousness and memory are extremely dim, unless revived by animal blood. Once having drunk, it is temporarily revived and able to recall things and converse.
Skepticism, philosophical: In general, a reaction against statements claiming certainty. Spread over several centuries and different movements (for example, the
Middle and New Academies), skeptics generally agreed that real knowledge of
things was not attainable. The most prudent position was to withhold consent to
propositions. See also Sextus Empiricus.
Socrates (469–​399 b.c.e.): Athenian philosopher; executed on charge of impiety. Early
work in physical philosophy; later turned to ethics and politics. S. pioneered
technique of the elenchus (questioning an opponent, thus leading to refutation).
As S. left no writings, what is known of his thought must be drawn from Plato,
Aristotle, Xenophon, and others.
Solon (ca. 640–​ca. 560 b.c.e.): Athenian statesman, lawgiver, and poet. His poetry is
moralistic, condemning corruption, injustice, and the arrogance of the rich and
powerful.
sophist: Private teachers in Athens in the 5th century b.c.e. They taught mainly rhetoric and techniques of argument to students preparing for public life; reputed for
questioning traditional values, myths, and religious beliefs and for promoting
relativism.
216
216
glossary of names and terms
Stoa: “The portico.” The name refers to the Stoa Poikile in Athens, a hall in Athens
where Zeno gathered with his students. By metonymy (see) the Stoic school of
philosophy. See also Stoicism.
stoicheia: “Elements”; term used for both the physical elements (earth, air, fire, water)
and for the principles of a subject such as geometry.
Stoicism: School of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium (see). Mainly
ethical, taught that virtue is the highest good. Though deterministic, Stoicism
allowed for moral freedom. Taught that all things composed of matter. God and
the world are one and contain the logos, the principle of reason governing everything. Stoics believed that ancient wisdom concealed in myth was corrupted by
poets, but could be recovered by allegoresis supported by etymology.
Strabo (ca. 63 b.c.e.–​19 c.e.): Greek traveler and geographer, active at Rome. His
Geography survives almost intact. In it he discusses places mentioned by Homer,
whom he regarded as authoritative, and argued that Homer’s descriptions contained a kernel of truth.
syllabary: Writing system in which symbols represent whole syllables rather than individual sounds. Linear B (see) is an example.
symbolism: The employment of persons or things as signs of other things. In contrast to Stoic allegory, which is substitutive, the signifying person or thing is not
erased.
Tabula Cebetis (“Tablet of Cebes”): Pseudonymous work written in early centuries
c.e. Author lays out a tableau and interprets its mysteries for visitors who do not
understand it. Contains allegories of the virtues and vices.
Tartarus: The deepest part of the earth in which Zeus imprisoned the Titans and their
allies who opposed him, including his father, Kronos. See also Hades.
Terence (ca. 195–​159 b.c.e.): Roman author of comic plays.
Tertullian (ca. 160–​ca. 225 c.e.): Christian apologist and theologian, active at Carthage.
Thales of Miletus (late 7th–​
6th century b.c.e.): Astronomer and mathematician.
Founder of the Milesian school (see), which concentrated on physical science.
Proposed water as the archē (see).
Theagenes of Rhegium ( fl. ca. 525 c.e.): Early grammarian who interpreted Homer’s
poems allegorically.
Theogony: “Origins of the Gods.” An epic poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the
world and successive generations of gods, culminating in the unending reign of
Zeus. Regarded by Aristotle as a pioneering work on cosmology.
Themis/​themis: “Law” or “right.” Represented in Theogony as a female Titan; aunt of
Zeus, who later married her.
Theodosius I, emperor (reigned 379–​395 c.e.): Last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western portions of the Empire. A strict Christian, T. established a
series of laws prohibiting pagan practices and Christian heresies.
217
glossary of names and terms
217
theion, (to): “The divine”; a quality that belongs to both gods and exceptional mortals.
theomachia: A battle among the gods, especially that described in Iliad 10.
theos: See also daimōn. The standard Greek word for god; etymology uncertain.
Theseus: Legendary hero of Athens. Conducted numerous exploits against monsters
and robbers, like those of Heracles. Renowned for rescuing the Athenian hostages from Crete and dispatching the Minotaur. Subject of numerous “lives,”
notably one by Plutarch.
Timaeus: Late work by Plato that presents a “myth” containing an account of creation.
In it the demiourgos (“builder”) first designs the cosmos according to the forms,
then proceeds to build a physical cosmos based on the design. The physical cosmos is not to be eternal in itself, but contingent on the will of the demiourgos.
Work influenced Neoplatonism and Christianity.
Titans: In mythology, members of the second generation of gods, children of Ouranos
and Gaia. Warred with Zeus in the titanomachia and lost. Number includes
anthropomorphic beings (e.g., Kronos), natural phenomena (e.g., Ocean), and
mental abstractions (e.g., Themis)
Torah: Literally, “the Teaching”; equated with Jewish religious law as expressed in the
first five books of the Old Testament.
Trojan War (12th century b.c.e.?): Legendary ten-​year siege of Troy (northwest corner of
Turkey) by Greeks over Helen, Menelaus’s wife, abducted by Paris, son of Trojan
king Priam. War forms basis of Homer’s two epics and Vergil’s Aeneid.
Ulysses: See Odysseus.
Venus: See Aphrodite.
Vulcan: See Hephaestus.
Vergil (70–​19 b.c.e.): Roman poet famous for his epic Aeneid (see). His Fourth Eclogue
was interpreted by Christians as a prophecy of the birth of Christ.
Vulgate: Translation of the entire Bible into Latin by St. Jerome (see) ca. 400 c.e.
Certain canonical books of the Old Testament were translated directly from
Hebrew, others from Greek, or Hebrew with the aid of Greek.
Works and Days: Epic poem by Hesiod (see). Deals principally with farming and husbandry, but contains valuable mythical material, including the allegory of the
metals, representing successive ages of human development, and the myth of
Pandora’s box.
Xenophanes of Colophon (6th century b.c.e.): Cosmologist, theologian, and poet.
Educated in Ionia, traveled extensively, migrated to the court of Hieron in
Syracuse. Regarded myths as fictions (plasmata). Famous for his deconstruction
of the Homeric gods and proposal for worthier divinities; influenced Plato.
Yahweh: Name for the god of the Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Originally a
warrior god who aided the Israelites in their battles, Yahweh became the sole god
218
218
glossary of names and terms
of the Jews, and after the Babylonian exile was regarded as the creator of the world
and one true God of the cosmos.
Zeno of Citium (335–​263 b.c.e.): Philosopher active in Athens, founder of Stoicism (see).
Zeus (Jupiter): In mythology, son of Kronos and Rhea. The chief god and most powerful of the Greek pantheon. Overthrew Kronos and the Titans and imprisoned
them in Tartarus (see). Married seven wives, including the allegorical figures
Themis (Law), Mnemosyne (Memory), and Metis (Counsel). Produced Athena
from his own head to forestall a usurper and rule forever. God of oaths and protector of travelers.
219
General Index
Abraham, 15. See also biblical stories;
Genesis
Academy, 99, 144. See also Plato
Achilles, 17–​18, 77, 80–​81, 125, 173n10.
See also Homer; Trojan War
Adam and Eve, 17, 21. See also biblical
stories; Genesis
Adimantus, 67. See also Plato
Aegina, 28. See also literacy
Aeneas, 2, 17. See also myth; mythology
Aesopian fable, 7, 74–​75. See also fable
aether, 19, 103, 121. See also fire
Agamemnon, 18, 25–​26, 80–​81. See
also Homer
agnostic, 52–​53, 60. See also gods; God;
religion
Aidoneus, 86
Ajax, 18. See also Homer
Akkadians, 2–​3. See also mythology
Alcaeus, 120. See also poetry; poets
Alexander the Great, 2, 15, 28, 125, 150.
See also Alexandria
Alexandria, 93, 150–​51, 154, 158, 166. See
also Alexander the Great
allegoresis, 74, 82, 151–​52, 162. See also
allegory
allegory, 7, 9, 27, 30, 66, 69, 73–82,
98, 116, 131, 141–​4 2, 161, 168–69,
179nn1–​2; definition of, 120;
as a figure of speech, 119; the
growth of, 109–​22; Hesiodic
model of, 131; historical, 182n2;
metaphorical nature of, 138;
moral, 79; personification the
opposite of, 135; physical, 79,
111, 126–​27, 137; psychological,
111, 126, 152; rediscovery of,
169; saving the poets without,
123–​29; substitutionist, 161, 169;
to symbolism, 131–​45. See also
exegesis; hyponoia; interpretation;
myth; symbol
alphabet, Greek, 8, 28. See also
Phoenicians
Amazons, 83, 86, 91, 181n8. See also
Plutarch; Scythia
ambiguity, 11, 24, 80
Ambrose, 159, 168–​69. See also
Augustine
Ammonius Saccas, 151. See also Origen;
Plotinus
Amor and Psyche, 131–​33, 135, 144. See
also Apuleius; fable
anankê (necessity), 39, 50, 58. See also
chance; necessity
anatomy, viii, 80. See also Metrodorus of
Lampsacus
Anaxagoras, 47–​51, 53, 57, 60,
80, 98–99. See also atheism;
philosophy; Presocratics
Anaximander, 40, 42, 48. See also
natural philosophy; Presocratics
Anaximenes, 42, 46, 57, 81, 97. See also
natural philosophy; Presocratics
220
220
gener al index
Ancyra, 93
Antheus, 66. See also playwrights;
tragedians
Antisthenes, 79. See also Cynicism
apartheid, human, 21
apeiron (the infinite), 42
Aphrodite, 17, 19, 55–​56, 77–​79, 114–​15,
124, 159. See also gods; Homer
Apollo, 25, 30, 65, 78, 80, 120–​21, 132.
See also gods
Apsu, 20. See also Babylonians
Apuleius, 131–​35, 143–​4 4, 179n15, 184n1;
The Golden Ass of, 131; imagery
of, 141. See also Amor and Psyche;
fable; Platonists
Ares, 78–​79. See also gods
archê (principle), 41–​43, 46, 49, 116,
119, 153, 175n23, 176n39; as divine
element, 50, 110, 182n15; of the
Ionians, 81. See also divine, the;
element
Ariadne, 84–​85, 92. See also Theseus
Aristobulus of Panaeas, 153–​54. See also
allegory; Philo
Aristophanes, 51, 57; Clouds of, 51;
Frogs of, 57
Aristotle, 10, 40–​46, 51–​67, 70–​71,
98–​106, 115, 123–​29, 138, 177n7,
182n21; Metaphysics of, 10, 42, 104;
Nichomachaean Ethics of, 123; On
the Heavens of, 105; Poetics of, 64,
123, 179n21; on the poets, 33, 64,
126, 184n1; unmoved mover of, 103.
See also Peripatetics; philosophy;
Plato; theism
art, 70, 81. See also mimêsis; poetry
Artemis, 78. See also Diana; gods
astronomy, 8, 42
Ate (Ruin), 77–​78
atheism, 20, 40, 50–​61, 75, 81, 99, 149,
177n6, 178n30; laws against, 53.
See also Dawkins, Richard; impiety;
philosophy; theism
Athena, 21, 23, 37, 77, 81, 138, 150, 160.
See also gods
Athens, 4, 8, 28, 37, 48, 51–​61, 68,
83–​84, 91–​99, 151. See also Greeks,
ancient; literacy
atheos (godless), 53–​54. See also gods;
impiety; religion
atomists, 40, 49–​50, 58–​59, 97, 99,
101–3, 106. See also cosmology;
natural philosophy; Presocratics
Augustine, ix–​x, 10, 38, 89, 96–​97,
129, 150, 157–​62, 167–​69, 184n3,
187n42; On Christian Doctrine of,
157–​61, 167; On the City of God
of, 162; semiology of, 158. See
also Church Fathers; exegesis;
interpretation; symbol
Augustus, Emperor, 29. See also Roman
Empire; Rome
authority, vii, 11, 26–​27, 29; of the
Church, 166; of Homer and Hesiod,
31, 34, 80, 101, 115; over nature, 106;
of philosophers, 86; priestly, 31; of
scripture, 34, 161. See also Hesiod;
Homer; inspiration; magisterium
authorship model, 5. See also myth
origins
Babylonians, 7–​8, 13–​14, 16; Enuma Elish
of the, 14, 20. See also astronomy;
Hammurabi, King; Marduk;
mythology
Bacchus, 74. See also Dionysius
Basil of Caesarea, 128, 160; “Address
to Young Men on How They
Might Derive Benefit from Greek
Literature” of, 129. See also Church
Fathers
being, 51, 98, 101; divine, 51; Mind as
a, 99; nonmaterial, 51, 98. See also
materialism; matter; substance
belief, 2, 6, 11, 13, 88; about the
gods, 25; in the gods, 54; in a
judgment followed by reward and
punishment, 25. See also myth
Berkeley, George, 177n10. See also
philosophy
Bible, 16, 34, 69, 147–​48, 155, 159–​60,
162, 167–​68, 175n7; authority of
the, 167; Hebrew, 151, 157; unitary
reading of the, 172n1. See also
biblical stories; Christian scriptures;
Jewish scriptures; Septuagint
biblical stories, 7, 13, 22, 154, 168. See
also Bible; Christianity; Jews
biblical studies, 29. See also classical
studies
biography, 85, 126. See also history; myth
Boccaccio, 71. See also Renaissance
body, 75, 137. See also matter; soul
books, 13. See also myth; literature
Cadmus, 22. See also myth
Callimachus, x. See also poetry; poets
Calypso, 124. See also Homer
Cassiodorus, 188n1. See also Church
Fathers
221
gener al index
causation, viii, 43, 80; Aristotle on, 103,
176n25; natural, 40; principle of,
44. See also naturalist explanations;
natural philosophy
Cebes, 140. See also Socrates; symbol;
Tabula Cebetis
Celsus, 147–​48, 154, 168; Against
Christianity of, 147. See also
Christianity; Origen; Platonists
censorship, 69. See also culture; Plato
centaurs, 85–​86, 94. See also
monsters; myth
Cerberus, 86, 88, 95, 123. See also Hades;
monsters
Ceres, 135–​36. See also gods
chance, 50, 104, 106. See also necessity
chaos, 19. See also Chaos
Chaos, 19, 97, 116. See also chaos;
cosmology; gods
character, 16, 124–​25, 136, 141. See also
fable; gods; myth
Charlemagne, 29. See also
authority; Bible
Charybdis, 95. See also monsters
Christianity, viii, 6, 10–​11, 34, 37, 58,
61, 102–​7, 147–​51, 155, 158–​62,
165– ​69. See also Bible; Christian
scriptures; Church Fathers;
heresy; revelation; theology
Christian scriptures, vii, 38, 165–​67;
interpretation of the, ix, 10–​11.
See also Bible; Christianity;
interpretation; Jewish scriptures;
Septuagint
Chrysippus, 112–​13, 115, 118. See
also Stoics
Church Fathers, 11, 40, 88; Greek, ix,
169; Latin, 169, 178n27. See also
Christianity; Christian scriptures
Cicero, 29, 61, 119, 128, 138; Hortensius
of, 159; On the Nature of the Gods of,
117–​18. See also allegory; rhetoric;
skepticism
Circe, 79, 184n1. See also Homer;
Odysseus
classical studies, 3, 29. See also biblical
studies
Cleanthes, 112–​13, 118. See also
Stoics
Clement of Alexandria, 158–​59, 162;
Exhortation to the Greeks of, 158–59,
162; Stromateis of, 158. See also
Church Fathers; Origen
code of ethics, 24–​25, 27. See also code of
law; moral world; Torah
221
code of law, 24–​25; Athenian, 28. See also
code of ethics; law; lawgiver
Colchis, 18. See also Jason
commentaries, 11, 34. See also exegesis;
interpretation; scholia
communication, 73. See also media;
narrative
composition, 128. See also interpretation
Corinth, 28. See also literacy
Cornutus, 113–​16, 118–​20, 122, 125,
140, 142. See also allegory;
cosmology; Stoics
cosmography, 18
cosmologists, 63, 80, 105, 131. See also
cosmology; Presocratics
cosmology, 5–​6, 9–​19, 24, 40–​53, 63,
99–​100, 109, 116; the language
of, 40; and literary criticism,
81; of the Stoics, 119–​22, 128.
See also cosmologists; natural
philosophy; science; gods; myth;
Platonists; Stoics
cosmos, 5, 8, 10, 39–​43, 51, 63, 98,
100–4, 106, 123, 136, 138; cause of
the, 64; as divine, 110; elements of
the, 78; as eternal and uncreated,
106; law of the, 50; origins of the,
vii–​v iii, 2, 9–​10, 13–​14, 19, 61. See
also cosmology, Hesiod; myth;
natural philosophy; universe
Cratylus, 112. See also etymology; Socrates
creation, 6, 23, 100, 152–​53, 168,
176n39. See also cosmology; creator
god; demiurge; God; intelligent
design; theism
creator god, 41, 50, 102. See also
demiurge; God; gods
Crete, 28, 84, 92. See also literacy
Critias, 56–​57, 65; Sisyphus of, 60, 89.
See also atheism; Socrates
Cronus. See Kronos
cult, 2, 31, 37, 81; of heroes, 5. See also
gods; heroes; religion
culture, viii, 2–​4 , 11, 45, 55, 65–​66, 119,
147, 160, 169; oral, 30. See also
media; religion; society
Cumae, 28. See also literacy
Cybele, 165. See also gods; religion
Cyclopes, 124. See also monsters,
Polyphemus
Cynicism, 79. See also philosophical
schools; philosophy
Daedalus, 84. See also Minos
daimon, 1–​2, 56, 76–​78, 80
222
222
gener al index
Darwin, Charles, 52, 102. See also
evolution
Dawkins, Richard, 20, 38–​39, 150,
186n12. See also atheism; theology
Demeter, 54–​56, 80, 98, 119, 158. See
also Athens; gods
Demetrius Phalereus, 93. See
also Athens
demiurge, 41, 100–​1, 104, 153. See also
creator god; gods; Plato; Timaeus
democracy, 92. See also Athens
Democritus, 49, 54, 58, 89, 97. See also
atomists; Presocratics
Demon, 83–​84. See also Plutarch
Demos, 92. See also Athens
Deucalion and Pyrrha, 3. See also flood;
myth; Ovid
Diagoras of Melos, 54–​55, 59–​60. See
also impiety; poets
Diana, 142. See also Artemis
Dicaearchus, 83. See also Plutarch
didactic, 27, 64. See also Hesiod; poetry
Dikê, 20, 24, 55. See also justice
Dio Cassius, 184n4. See also history
Dio Chrysostom, 125; Discourses of, 125.
See also philosophy; rhetoric
Diodorus of Sicily, 89. See also history
Diogenes, 79. See also Cynicism;
philosophy
Diogenes Laertius, 40. See also history;
philosophy
Dionysus, 54, 56, 80, 98, 159. See also
Bacchus; gods
disbelief, 3, 8. See also belief; myth;
mythology
divine, the, 40–​42, 97, 100. See also
archê, gods
divine nature, 50, 56. See also divine, the;
God; gods; theology
Drachmann, A. B., 57
dualism, 105, 107, 109–​10. See also
Platonists
dunamis (power), 40
earth, 19, 55, 76–​7 7, 101. See also Gaia
education, 68–​69, 100, 166. See also
morality; Plato
Egyptians, 2, 4, 7–​8, 28, 54, 90, 102,
149, 153, 160. See also mythology
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, 54
elements, 42, 81, 102, 106, 141; divine, 110;
empty, 81; opposition of the, 79. See
also cosmology; natural philosophy
Eleusinian mysteries, 54. See also
mystery religions
Elysian Fields, 18
emotion, 76. See also ethics; reason
Empedocles, 59, 63–​64, 126. See also
philosophy; Presocratics
empiricism, Greek, 41. See also natural
philosophy
Enlightenment, 37. See also skepticism
epic, 7, 14–​15, 34, 64–​67, 127, 131. See
also poetry
Epicharmus, 56. See also gods;
mythology
Epicureans, 110, 148–​49, 179n22. See
also Epicurus; philosophical schools
Epicurus, 40, 58–​60, 71, 99; as critic
of Homer, 120; gods of, 106,
178n26. See also atomists; Lucretius;
philosophy
Eratosthenes, 94. See also
geography; Strabo
eris (strife, repulsion), 44, 79. See
also erôs
erôs (attraction), 19, 44, 79. See also Eros
Eros, 19, 131. See also cosmology;
erôs; gods
ethics, 51–​52, 59, 75. See also happiness;
morality; vice; virtue
etymology, 111–​12, 116–​17, 121–​22, 139;
183n9; of divine names, 113, 183n14;
folk, 183n5. See also allegory
Euclid, 8. See also geometry
Euhemerus, 5, 55, 90, 159; Sacred
Scripture of, 5, 89
Euripides, 57, 60, 66, 112, 125, 178n20,
178n25; Bacchae of, 58; Bellerophon
of, 58, 60; Hippolytus of, 58;
Phoenician Women of, 124. See also
tragedians
Eurydice, 30
evolution, vii, 20, 23, 27; of the gods,
23–24; theory of, 52, 102. See
also creation; Darwin, Charles;
evolutionary model
evolutionary model, 5–​6, 19, 21. See also
evolution; myth origins
exegesis, ix, 10–​11, 97, 111, 122, 162; of
Homer, 121, 136; method of, 152;
of myth, 114, 188n6; scriptural,
10, 155; symbolist, 144, 162, 169.
See also allegory; interpretation;
literature; myth
Exodus, 31. See also Jewish scriptures
fable, 7, 27, 68, 74–​87, 101–​10, 118,
121–33, 141, 162, 168; of Hesiod, 22,
94; philosophical, 131; Platonic, 138;
223
gener al index
of the races named after metals, 22–​
23; of the temple of Cronus, 140–​41.
See also Aesopian fable; myth
faith, viii, 8. See also belief
fiction, 64, 66, 94–​95. See also
mimêsis; plasma
figural interpretation ( figurate), 168.
See also Augustine; exegesis;
interpretation
film, 66. See also fiction; mimêsis; plasma
fire, 23, 25; cosmic, 43; as the single
uncreated principle, 43; as Zeus
as aether, 121. See also Heraclitus;
Hesiod; Prometheus
first things, 31, 34. See also theogony
Fletcher, Angus, 142. See also allegory
flood, 3, 22. See also Deucalion and
Pyrrha; Genesis; myth
forms, 100, 103, 139; in the mind of the
creator, 153. See also Philo; Plato;
Platonists; substance
Franklin, Benjamin, 24. See also
proverbs
freedom, vii, ix–​x, 9, 61, 125, 165;
intellectual, 168–​69. See also
authority
French Revolution, 15
Furies, 19. See also Ouranos
Gaia, 19, 24, 55, 68, 97, 101, 113, 136. See
also earth; gods; cosmos
Galen, 38–​39, 147
Garden of Eden, 14, 115, 152, 154, 162.
See also Genesis
genealogy, 15, 90. See also myth
Genesis, 3, 14–​15, 19, 21, 34, 155–​56;
creation of Eve in, 14; Garden of
Eden story in, 14, 115, 152, 154, 162;
six days of creation in, 153, 168; two
accounts of the creation of humans
in, 20. See also Jewish scriptures
geography, 18, 83, 94. See also
Eratosthenes; history; Strabo
geometry, 8, 63. See also Euclid;
Pythagoras of Samos
German Romantics, 3. See also myth
Gilgamesh, 14. See also Sumerians
gnômê (thought, judgment), 43
gnômôn (yardstick), 129
God, 10, 13, 16, 20, 24, 31–​38, 59, 99,
102–​7, 168; of Aristotle, 51, 103–​4;
as a conscious being, 100; creation
of the universe by, 50; of Genesis,
153; Mind identified with, 99; and
223
nature, 105; rediscovery of, 97–​107.
See also gods; religion; theism
gods, 2–​5, 10–​11, 17, 20–​25, 33–​43, 49,
55, 76–​81, 106, 159, 166, 173n6,
175n4; anthropomorphic, 50, 98,
136; battles of the, 69, 79; creation
of the world by, 40; critics of the,
57; deathless, 24; denial of the, 53,
56; of Epicurus, 59; governance
of the universe by the, 10; and
humans, 17, 23–​24; images of the,
52; inspiration of the poets by the,
65; king of the, 14; mind of the, 17;
names of the, 111, 118; nature of the,
16, 52–​54, 67, 118; origins of the,
31, 89; physical and moral character
of the, 27, 69; of the poets, 20, 40,
45, 80, 127, 173n6; redefining the,
53, 60; worship of the, 37, 52, 81.
See also atheism; cult; God; paian;
Plato; polytheism; religion; theism;
Xenophanes
golden age, 14. See also Genesis;
Hesiod
good order, 24. See also cosmos
Good, the, 51, 70, 100, 139. See also
forms; Neoplatonists; Plato;
Platonists
grammar, 9, 30. See also grammarians
grammarians, 55. See also grammar
Greek gods, 1–​2, 24. See also gods;
Roman gods
Greeks, ancient, viii–​i x, 1, 4–​10, 31–35,
69, 83, 91, 155, 168; colonies of
the, 8; ethical codes of the, 24; law
codes of the, 24. See also astronomy;
mythology; philosophy; science
Hades, 17–​18, 25, 81, 86–​87, 91,
94, 96, 119, 126, 133, 145, 155,
173n8. See also gods; underworld
Hammurabi, King, 14. See also
Babylonians
happiness, 75–​76. See also ethics;
morality; virtue
Hecataeus of Miletus, 6, 43–​4 4, 87–​91,
97–​98, 159. See also history
Hector, 80–​81. See also heroes; Homer
Helen, 15, 18, 80–​81, 96. See also
Homer; Menelaus
Helios, 25, 47–​48, 78, 80–​81. See also
gods; personification
Hellanicus, 83, 87. See also Plutarch
hellenismos, 30
224
224
gener al index
Hephaestus, 21, 54, 69, 78–​79, 112, 115,
151, 161. See also gods
Hera, 55, 69, 77–​80, 101, 110, 112, 115, 117,
121, 123, 144, 151. See also gods; Juno
Heracles, 15–​16, 18, 31, 75–​7 7, 80, 82,
91–92, 94, 97–88, 173. See also
Hercules
Heraclitus of Ephesus, 41–​4 4, 46–​49,
63, 79–​81, 97–​98, 101–​2, 106, 112,
119, 138. See also Presocratics
Heraclitus the Younger, 120–​22, 125,
128, 138; Homeric Problems of, 120.
See also allegory; Stoics
Hercules, 1, 7. See also Heracles
heresy, 166. See also Christianity;
theology
Hermes, 17, 78, 151. See also gods
Herodorus, 83, 87. See also Plutarch
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, 65, 76, 80,
90–​91, 98; Histories of, 90. See also
geography; history
heroes, 1–​3, 16–​17, 20–​21, 33, 55, 68, 71–​
76, 87–​91, 94, 145; homecoming of
the, 31. See also myth; mythology
heroic age, 27. See also fable;
heroes; myth
Hesiod, viii, 4, 7–​25, 32–​4 4, 64–​65,
76–​7 7, 94–​112, 118, 138, 149, 155,
168, 173nn16–​17; authority of,
30–31; cosmology of, 44, 50, 64, 116;
criticism of, 65, 79, 81–​82; in the
curriculum, 68; divine inspiration
of, 32; the gods of, 45–​46, 50, 52,
65–​71, 79, 94, 109, 173n16; names
of divine beings in, 55; paradigm of,
106; prophesy of, 21; shade of, 63;
Shield of Heracles of, 18; Theogony
of, 14–​19, 21–​27, 32–​34, 61, 68, 71–​
79, 101, 113–​14; Works and Days of,
14, 20–​22, 24, 27, 173n16. See also
proverbs; myth; poetry; poets
hexameter, 34. See also Homer; poetry
hierarchy, 25. See also gods; society
Hindus, 2. See also mythology
Hipparchus, 8. See also astronomy
historia, viii
history, 2–​9, 15–​18, 24, 43, 64, 66,
95, 97–​98, 165; Greek, 27, 31,
91, 172n13; in myth, 83–​96, 123;
rationalist view of, 169. See also
myth origins; pseudo-​history
Hobbes, Thomas, 4, 56
Homer, viii–​i x, 4, 8–​11, 15–​19, 25–​35,
43, 64–​65, 74–​80, 95–​96, 109,
138, 148, 155, 168; allegorical
interpretation of, 30, 78, 121–​22;
authority of, 30–​31, 52; the books
of, 29; copies of, 30; criticism
of, 30, 65, 79, 81–​82, 91; in the
curriculum, 68; the gods of, 20,
38, 45–​46, 50–​66, 71, 81, 94, 109;
history in, 94; Iliad of, 14–​18,
26–​33, 61, 67–​68, 77, 79, 87, 94,
120; monsters of, 95; names of
divine beings in, 55; Odyssey of,
14–​18, 25, 27, 31, 67–​68, 71, 79,
94, 120; physical explanations
of, 80, 120–​22; recitation of, 31;
scholiast of, 78; select passages
of, 120; shade of, 63, 173n9; social
code of, 25; the status of theologian
of, 138–​39, 172n4; symbols in the
mind of, 140. See also myth; poetry;
poets; war
Homeric Hymns, 31, 38, 52, 175n4. See
also Homer; religious festival
hubris, 25–​26
hyponoia (underthought), 73, 75,
119–20, 123, 127–​28, 179n2. See
also allegory
image, 141. See also symbol; Tabula
Cebetis
impiety, 53–​54, 99. See also atheism;
gods; religion
inspiration, 11, 31; divine, 34. See also
authority; poetry
intelligent design, 100, 102, 106, 182n14.
See also creation; creator god; God;
teleology
interpretation, 2, 8–​11, 80, 126, 139, 156;
allegorical, 78–​79, 82, 109, 151, 169;
of the Bible, 156; contradictions
in, 152; history of, 78, 116; literal,
78, 168; modes of, 11, 128, 162,
168; moral, 169; pioneers of, 3;
of scripture, 155; Stoic myth, 119;
tools of, 97. See also allegory;
composition; figural interpretation;
literature; poetry; symbol
Iris, 47, 80. See also gods; mythology;
personification
Isis, 7. See also Egyptians; Osiris
James I, King, 29. See also
authority; Bible
Jason, 87, 92; and the Argonauts, 2. See
also heroes; myth; mythology
Jerome, 157, 169, 174n10. See also
Church Fathers; exegesis
225
gener al index
225
Jewish scriptures, vii, 13, 38;
interpretation of the, ix, 10. See also
allegory; Bible; Christian scriptures;
interpretation; Old Testament;
Septuagint; Torah
Jews, 13–​14. See also Jewish scriptures;
Septuagint; Torah
Joyce, James, 1; Ulysses of, 1. See also
Odysseus
Julian, Emperor, 148. See also
Roman Empire
Juno, 144. See also Hera
Jupiter, 56, 89, 116, 118, 133. See also
gods; Zeus
justice, 20, 24, 60. See also Dikê
Justin Martyr, 149; First Apology of, 149.
See also Church Fathers
Justinian, Emperor, 61. See also
Christianity; Roman Empire
literary criticism, ix, 81. See also
interpretation; literature
literature, 3, 7–​8, 11, 129, 151, 160;
criticism of, 8, 127; interpretation
of, 8, 10, 126; Jewish, 172n17. See
also myth; poetry
logographic system, 28. See also
Egyptians
logos (reason), 43, 46–​47, 49, 126, 149,
155. See also Heraclitus; philosophy
Love, 132–​33; divine, 135. See also gods;
Amor and Psyche
Lucilius Balbus, 116, 118–​19. See also
Cicero; Stoics
Lucretius, 6, 59–​61, 71, 85–​86, 91;
On the Nature of Things of, 59.
See also Epicurus; myth origins;
poets; poetry
lyric, 64. See also myth; poetry
knowledge, 45, 107. See also philosophy;
Plato; Platonists; Xenophanes
Konstan, David, 144
Kronos, 4–​5, 19–​24, 68, 77, 79, 91, 109,
111–​18, 140. See also Gaia; Ouranos;
Rhea; Zeus
Macrobius, 7. See also fable; literary
criticism; philosophy
magisterium (teaching authority), 166.
See also authority; Christianity
mankind, 80; origin of, 4; primitive, 54.
See also Hesiod; myth
Marcus Aurelius, 38. See also Roman
Empire; Stoics
Marduk, 14. See also Babylonians
Martianus Capella, 140; The Marriage of
Philology and Mercury, 142–​4 4. See
also exegesis; symbol
materialism, 51. See also being
matter, 10, 49, 99, 102–​3, 105, 110;
soul and, 137–​39. See also being;
substance; universe
meaning, 141, 169; anagogical level of,
163; figurative, 169; moral level
of, 163; of the scriptures, 154, 162;
symbolic, 152. See also exegesis;
image; interpretation; signs; symbol
Medea, 92. See also Jason
media, 69. See also culture
Melissos of Samos, 98, 177n2. See also
Parmenides; Presocratics
memory, 33; 55; racial, 3. See also
Memory; Mnemosyne; myth
Menelaus, 18, 96. See also Helen; Homer
Mercury, 133, 144. See also gods
metaphor, 135
Metis (Wisdom), 23, 55, 76. See also gods;
wisdom; Zeus
metre, 64. See also poetry
Metrodorus of Chios, 180n15. See also
atomists; Democritus
Lactantius, 150; On the Wrath of God of,
150. See also Christianity; Church
Fathers
Lamberton, Robert, 145
language, 1. See also myth; mythology
Latin, ix–​xi, 11, 56, 74, 111, 116, 119, 131,
142, 147, 157, 159, 169
law, 20, 25, 55–​56; author of the, 24; of
the cosmos, 50; Greek, 61; operation
of the universe according to its own,
50. See also code of ethics; code of
law; lawgiver; reason; Themis
lawgiver, 4, 27, 29, 63, 90. See also
Pythagoras of Samos; Solon
laws of nature, 3, 38–​39, 51, 102, 109. See
also science
Lef kowitz, Mary, 1
legend, 30–​31, 48, 63, 118. See also myth
Leucippus, 49, 58, 103, 182n21. See also
atomists; Presocratics
Lévi-​Strauss, Claude, 66. See also myth
Lewis, C. S., 141–​42. See also
fable; symbol
Litai (Suppliant Prayers), 77, 82
literacy, vii, ix, 8, 14, 27–​28, 68. See also
oral tradition; writing
literalism, 11. See also exegesis;
interpretation
226
226
gener al index
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, 80–​81,
112, 180n15. See also anatomy;
Anaxagoras; interpretation; poetry
Midas, 92–​93. See also Silenus
Middle Ages, ix, 11, 148, 182n14, 188n6.
See also Christianity; Latin
Miletus, 133
mimêsis (imitation), 64, 68, 70, 126–​27,
143. See also Aristotle; fiction; poetry
mind, 10, 47, 49, 74, 78, 81, 100;
concepts in the, 135; eye of the, 141.
See also Anaxagoras; Mind; nous;
Plato; reality; soul
Mind, 41, 49–​50; of Anaxagoras, 49–​50,
57, 99. See also mind; nous
Minos, 18, 84–​85, 91–​92. See also gods;
Minotaur; underworld
minotaur, 84–​85, 92, 94. See also Minos;
monsters
Mnemosyne (Memory), 55, 76, 159. See
also gods; memory; Muses; Zeus
monism, 43, 107. See also dualism;
philosophy
monotheism, 46, 106, 149. See also God;
polytheism; theism; theology
monsters, 19, 85–​86, 94–​95. See also
gods; heroes, Titans
Monteverdi, Claudio, 1; Return of Ulysses
of, 1. See also Odysseus
morality, 60, 69; of the gods of the
poets, 68. See also education; ethics;
justice
moral world, 24, 27. See also code of
ethics; gods; vice; virtue
Moses, 13, 38, 149–​50, 152, 157, 167. See
also biblical stories; Genesis
Mount Olympus, 15–​16, 20, 32, 79, 107,
115. See also gods; myth
Musaeus, 30. See also myth;
poetry; poets
Muses, 30–​33, 65–​66, 71, 89, 116, 126,
159. See also Mnemosyne
muthos (myth), 6, 141, 155. See also
fable; myth
Mycenaean Age, 8, 14, 28, 172n2
mystery religions, 54. See also gods;
religion
myth, viii–​x, 1–​8, 11, 13, 46, 52, 56, 78,
116–​17, 163, 169; across cultures,
3; anatomy of, viii; coherence of,
116; criticism of, ix, 3, 6, 30, 68,
96, 122, 152; debunking of, 60;
defense of, 66, 69, 73; erotic, 11; and
ethnology, 172n13; and history, 17,
83–​96, 148, 172n13; interpretation
of, vii, 6, 50, 82, 107, 109, 113; of
the Jews, 150; language of, 26, 46;
literal truth of, 126, 162; moral
truths in, 124; origin of, 3–​4 , 11, 65,
119; the personae of, 124; philosophy
and, 7, 122; poetry a medium for
expressing, 64; primeval flood,
3; scientific truths in, 118; Stoic
interpreters of, 131. See also fable;
Hesiod; Homer; muthos; mythology;
myth origins; poetry; poets; symbol
mythology, 1–​2, 71, 154; fictions of,
47; North American, 3; South
American, 3. See also myth; myth
origins
myth origins, 5; authorship model of, 5;
evolutionary model of, 5–​6, 19, 21;
revelation model of, 5–​6. See also
myth; mythology
narrative, 2, 16, 27, 50, 73, 77,
172n1. See also communication;
narrative theory
narrative theory, 7. See also narrative
naturalist explanations, 48. See also
causation; natural philosophy
natural phenomena, 80–​81. See also
natural philosophy; nature
natural philosophy, viii, ix, 6, 9, 37,
46, 51, 60, 98–​99, 102. See also
philosophical schools; philosophy;
science
natural properties, 47. See also
personification
nature, 6, 9, 11, 20, 39–​41, 47, 100, 103,
114; and god, 50, 98; of the gods,
viii; principle of, 103; transfer of
divine powers to, 40; two basic
senses of, 104. See also philosophy;
physis; science
Naxos, 28. See also literacy
necessity (anankê), 50, 58, 102–​4 . See also
anankê, chance; reason
Neoplatonists, 136–​37, 140, 145, 147,
151, 159; cosmology of the, 183n14;
exegesis of the, 136–​39, 162. See also
allegory; Plato; Platonists; Plotinus;
Porphyry
Nestor, 16. See also Homer; Trojan War
Nicene Creed, 165. See also Christianity
Noah, 2, 22; sons of, 15. See also biblical
stories; Genesis
nomos (law, custom), 39
nous (mind), 47–​49, 51, 98–​99, 110; 163.
See also Anaxagoras; mind; Proclus
227
gener al index
ocean, 18, 55. See also Oceanos
Oceanos, 55. See also gods;
geography; ocean
Ockham’s razor, 42
Odysseus, 1, 17–​18, 25–​26, 79, 91, 95,
111–​12, 123–​24, 145, 150, 173n8,
184n1; and Calypso, 17; and Cyclops,
2; and the Sirens, 129. See also
Homer; myth; mythology; Ulysses
Oedipus, 2, 94, 124; and Jocasta, 155. See
also myth; mythology
Old Testament, 68, 150–​51, 157, 161,
166–​68. See also Bible; Jewish
scriptures; Septuagint
One, the, 98, 177n2. See also Melissos of
Samos; Parmenides
Ong, Walter, 30. See also study
oral tradition, 8–​9, 14, 27, 30. See also
literacy; writing
Origen, 10–​11, 149, 151, 155–​58, 161–​62,
168; Against Celsus of, 154–​55,
162; exegesis of, 154; Hexapla of,
157–​58; On First Principles of, 155,
157; semiology of, 158. See also
allegory; Church Fathers; exegesis;
interpretation
Orpheus, 7, 18, 30, 91, 172n14, 173n8. See
also myth; poetry; poets
Osiris, 8. See also Egyptians; Isis
Ouranos, 5, 19, 23–​2 4, 55, 68, 79,
112, 114. See also Gaia; Kronos;
sky; Zeus
Ovid, 3. See also myth; poetry
Paeon the Amathusian, 83. See also
Plutarch
paian (hymn of praise), 53, 177n7. See
also gods; religion
Panathenaia, 29, 31, 174n9. See also
Homer; recitation; religious festival;
rhapsodes
Pandora, 21, 23, 27, 118, 131. See
also Hesiod
papyrus roll, 28. See also literacy;
writing
paradigm, vii–​i x, 13, 16, 20; of the
poets, 13–​26. See also authority;
society
paradox, 54, 177n10
Paris, 76, 80–​81. See also
allegory; Homer
Parmenides, 49, 63, 98, 177n2. See also
philosophy; Presocratics
Pasiphaë, 84, 91. See also Daedalus;
Minos; Minotaur
227
Paul, Saint, 145, 166. See also
Christianity
Pausanias, 91–​93. See also
geography; legend
peace, 24. See also Peace
Peace, 55. See also gods; peace
Pegasus, 2. See also myth; mythology
Pelagian controversy, 167. See also
Christianity; Christian scriptures;
scripture
Peloponnesian Wars, 60, 99. See
also Athens
Pericles, 53. See also Athens
Peripatetics, 99, 149, 169. See also
Aristotle
Perithoüs, 173n7. See also heroes;
Theseus
personification, 47, 55, 75–​7 7, 80, 135,
140, 177n15. See also gods; natural
properties; symbol
Persephone, 86, 135. See also Hades;
Proserpina; Theseus
Perses, 24. See also Hesiod
Perseus, 1, 17; and Medusa, 2. See also
heroes; myth; mythology
Phaea, 88
Pherecydes of Athens, 83–​84, 87. See also
Plutarch
Pherecydes the Syrian, 79, 180n4. See
also allegory
Philo, 10–​11, 149, 151–​55, 160, 162,
186n21; Life of Moses of, 151; On
the Creation of the World of, 153,
187n21; On Providence of, 151;
Questions on Genesis of, 152, 155. See
also Alexandria; allegory; Church
Fathers; Platonists; Stoics
Philochorus, 83–​84. See also Plutarch
Philoctetes, 124
Philology, 143–​4 4. See also exegesis
philosophers, 53, 58, 61–​69, 78, 85, 93,
102, 149, 151; Christian, 103, 149;
gods of the, 51–​52. See also gods;
philosophy
philosophical schools, vii, 60, 97,
99, 107, 118, 122, 169. See also
philosophy
philosophy, 5–​11, 50, 66, 68, 71, 123, 128,
159, 166; of art, 70; in late antiquity,
6, 169; truths of, 71; Western,
51. See also natural philosophy;
philosophical schools; Plato;
science; social theory; Socrates
Philostratus, 140; The Images of, 140. See
also exegesis; symbol
228
228
gener al index
Phoenicians, 8, 28. See also alphabet
Phoenix, 77. See also Homer
physics, 60. See also cosmology; natural
philosophy; science
physis (nature), 6, 10, 37–​50, 97–​100,
102, 104–​6; of diseases, 40; the
paradigm of, 10. See also nature
piety, 90. See also impiety; Polybius;
religion
Pindar, 64, 173n10; Second Olympian
Ode of, 25
Pirithoüs, 86. See also Theseus
Pisistratus of Athens, 8, 29–​30, 34, 79,
92, 94. See also Athens; tyrant
Pithacus, 124
plasma (fiction), 47, 50, 65, 91, 94,
115–16, 168. See also fiction; mimêsis
Plato, 8–​10, 37–​41, 51– ​64, 79– ​82,
99–​106, 111–​18, 126–​28, 148–​50;
on allegory, 66, 69, 73; Allegory
of the Cave of, 70, 100; Cratylus
of, 112; on the connection of body
and soul, 105; incorporeal being
of, 98; on inspiration, 33; Ion of,
8; Meno of, 110; Myth of Er of, 110,
135; myths of, 82, 131, 141; Phaedo
of, 110; Phaedrus of, 74, 110, 131,
134–​35, 141, 145; on the myths of
the poets, 65–​67, 81, 100, 120, 124,
131; Republic of, 64–​70, 74, 100,
110, 115; Symposium of, 52, 110, 131,
134; teachings on love and soul
of, 134; theology of, 102; theory of
ideas of, 70, 100, 102; Timaeus of,
10, 100–​2 , 110, 153, 175n13; world
soul of, 105–​6. See also Academy;
forms; philosophy; Platonists;
poets; soul
Platonists, 100, 102, 106–​10, 112,
136, 147–​48, 154, 160, 166, 169;
allegorical interpretation of the,
107, 111, 134; Jewish, 169; Plutarch
grouped with the Middle, 131;
Timaeus a central text for the, 109.
See also Academy; dualism; Plato;
Neoplatonists
playwrights, 53–​54, 57. See also theater;
tragedians
Plotinus, 136–​37, 139, 147, 151. See also
Neoplatonists; Porphyry; Proclus
Plutarch, 73, 84–​89, 91–​95, 125–​31, 149,
155, 159; Isis and Osiris of, 184n6;
On the Study of Poetry of, 73, 126,
139; Parallel Lives of, 83, 87. See also
allegory; history; Platonists; poetry
poetry, vii–​i x, 3–​11, 33–​34, 54, 63–​64,
123, 136; allegorization of, 98; as an
art of imitation, 126; criticism of, 8,
63–​71; defenders of, 82, 109, 126;
enemies of, 4; literal truth in, 68,
123; mythological content of, 64, 82;
and philosophy, 64, 68, 71. See also
literature; myth; poets
poets, ix, 6, 18, 31, 44, 55, 61, 119; authority
of the, 109; critics of the, 9, 33,
68–​69; defense of the, 79–80, 82,
123–​29; gods of the, 45, 63, 109;
inspiration of the, 65; intention to
portray truths in the, 136; as inventors
of myth, 4–​5, 65, 90; as liars, 4, 68,
126; myths of the, 37; as philosophers,
5. See also literature; myth; poetry
political authority, 8. See also authority;
society
Polybius, 90. See also history
Polycrates, 91
Polyphemus, 25. See also Cyclopes;
monsters; Poseidon
polytheism, 46, 106, 149. See also gods;
monotheism; theology
Porphyry, 78, 136–​38, 144–​45, 147;
Cave of the Nymphs of, 136–​41,
152–​53, 160, 185n17; exegesis of,
138–​40. See also interpretation;
Neoplatonists; symbol
Poseidon, 25, 54, 78, 81, 87, 92, 111. See
also gods; Homer; ocean
Presocratics, ix, 37, 40–​41, 48, 51, 98,
115, 169. See also natural philosophy;
philosophy
Proclus, ix, 144–​45, 163, 185n30;
Commentary on Plato’s Republic
of, 144–​45. See also Neoplatonism;
philosophy; Platonists
Prodicus of Ceos, 54–​55, 59, 75–​7 7, 80–​
81, 89, 98, 112, 118, 158; “Heracles at
the Crossroads” of, 75–​82. See also
fable; sophists
Prometheus, 21, 23, 25, 173n14. See also
Titans; Zeus
propaideusis (preparatory study), 169. See
also education
Proserpina, 135. See also Persephone
prosopopoeia (creating a persona), 55, 75.
See also rhetoric
Protagoras of Abdera, 53–​54, 60. See also
sophists
Proteus, 1, 121. See also daimon; Homer
proverbs, 24, 136. See also code of
ethics; Hesiod
229
gener al index
providence, 59, 105, 149. See also gods;
religion; theology
Pseudo- ​Callisthenes, 171n3
pseudo-​history, 2. See also history
psychology, 6. See also soul
Ptolemy, 8. See also astronomy
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, King,
29, 174n10. See also authority;
Septuagint
Pythagoras of Samos, 8–​9, 40, 43, 63,
148. See also geometry; philosophy;
Presocratics; Pythagoreans
Pythagoreans, 7. See also philosophy;
Pythagoras of Samos
randomness. See chance
reality, 10. See also being; matter;
substance
reason, 3, 50, 76, 83, 86, 102. See also
emotion; law; necessity
recitation, 29–​32. See also Panathenaia;
religious festival
Reformation, 11. See also Christianity
religion, viii–​i x, 7, 11, 23, 25, 37, 50–​51,
61, 88, 117, 160; attacks on, 52, 59;
freedom of, 165; Greek, 25; practices
of, 55, 165; Roman, 25, 162; sanction
of, 31, 69; skepticism about, 53. See
also Christianity; Hesiod; Homer;
impiety; piety; religious festival;
theology
religious festival, 29, 31. See also
Homer; Panathenaia; recitation;
religion
Renaissance, ix, 61, 71, 188n6. See also
Boccaccio
Res gestae divi Augusti, 29. See also
Augustus, Emperor
revelation, 34; direct, 34; indirect, 34. See
also Bible; scripture
revelation model, 5–​6. See also myth
origins
rhapsodes, 29–​30, 35, 45. See also
Homer; recitation
Rhea, 24, 113, 140. See also
Kronos; Titans
rhetoric, 9, 53, 73, 75, 80, 160. See also
sophists
Rhodes, 28. See also literacy
Roman Empire, 61, 148, 150. See
also Rome
Roman gods, 1. See also gods; Greek
gods; Rome
Rome, 61, 83, 151, 169. See also Roman
Empire; Roman gods
229
Romulus, 83. See also Rome
Rumor, 55. See also gods
Samson, 7. See also biblical stories
satire, 57. See also theater
Saturn, 118–​19. See also gods; Kronos
Scamander, 78. See also Homer
scholia, 34. See also commentaries
science, viii–​i x, 37, 51, 118; elements
of, 109. See also allegory; natural
philosophy
scripture, 34, 61, 167; figurative sense
of, 161–​63; literal sense of, 161–​63;
as revelation from God, 34; unitary
reading of, 172n1. See also Bible;
Christian scriptures; exegesis;
Jewish scriptures; revelation
Scylla, 95. See also monsters
Scythia, 86, 90. See also Amazons
Septuagint, 29, 151, 153, 157, 174n10.
See also authority; Bible; Jewish
scriptures; Ptolemy II Philadelphus,
King
sex, 115. See also Aphrodite; Venus
Sextus Empiricus, 55. See also
skepticism
Shakespeare, 35. See also poetry
signs, 160–​62; Aristotelian concept of,
187n42. See also interpretation;
meaning; symbol
Silenus, 92–​93. See also Midas
simile, 138. See also symbol
Sisyphus, 18, 25
skepticism, vii, 3, 6, 8, 11, 37, 53, 60, 169,
178n30. See also disbelief; Sextus
Empiricus
Skeptics. See skepticism
sky, 19, 55, 76–​7 7. See also Ouranos
social practices, 13. See also authority;
society
social theory, 4. See also philosophy;
social practices; society
society, 6–​7, 13, 25, 68–​69, 100, 106. See
also Plato; social theory
Socrates, 51, 53–​54, 60, 63, 67, 126,
175n1. See also ethics; natural
philosophy; Plato
Sodom and Gemorrah, 22. See also
biblical stories
Solon, 4, 29, 126. See also Athens;
lawgiver
sophists, 4, 37, 52–​55, 60, 75, 77,
99; heirs of the, 60; skepticism
about religion in the, 53. See also
philosophy; rhetoric
230
230
gener al index
Sophocles, 65–​66. See also poets;
tragedians
soul, 10, 74–​75, 78, 103, 107, 110, 133–​37,
141–​45; of the cosmos, 105; and
Eros, 131; immaterial, 102, 105;
immortal, 148; and matter, 138–​
39. See also body; daimon; mind;
psychology; vice; virtue
Spartans, 124
Sphinx, 155. See also monsters; Oedipus
Stoics, 10, 98–​100, 105–​6, 116–​22,
138, 148–​49, 166, 169; allegorical
interpretation of the, 107, 111–​12,
116–​22; cosmology of the, 114–​16,
119–​22, 128; god of the, 106; myth
exegesis of the, 109, 162; theory
of the origin of myths of the, 119.
See also philosophical schools;
philosophy; symbol; theism
Strabo, 19, 90, 94–​96. See also
Eratosthenes; geography
study, 30. See also writing
sublime, 35. See also Homer; poetry
substance, 9, 103; immaterial, 10, 104–​5;
Stoics on the materiality of, 110. See
also mind; reality
Sumerians, 2–​3, 14; Gilgamesh of the, 14,
18. See also Gilgamesh; mythology
symbol, 80, 136–​37, 141–​42, 145, 158,
160–​63; language of, 139. See also
allegory; exegesis; interpretation;
signs; simile; symbolon
symbolon (symbol), 137. See also symbol
Tabula Cebetis, 140–​41. See also
Cebes; symbol
Tantalus, 18, 25
Tartarus, 18, 23–​25, 114. See also Hesiod;
underworld
taurus (bull), 84. See also Minos;
Pasiphaë
Taurus, 84–​85, 95. See also Minos;
Pasiphaë
teleology, 100, 106. See also
Aristotle; Plato
Terence, 74. See also allegory
Tertullian, 147, 149; On the Proscribing
of Heretics of, 147. See also
Christianity; Church Fathers
Thales of Miletus, 40–​42, 44, 55, 97. See
also natural philosophy; philosophy;
Presocratics
Theagenes of Rhegium, 9, 30, 78–​79,
81, 98, 111, 151. See also allegory;
Hesiod; Homer; interpretation
theater, 52, 68; festivals of, 52. See also
playwrights
theism, viii, 10, 20, 53, 98–​100, 107. See
also God; gods; theos
Themis (Right Order, Good Order), 20,
24, 55, 76. See also gods; law; Zeus
Theodosius I, Emperor, 165–​66.
See also Christianity; religion;
Roman Empire
theogony, 30, 65. See also first things;
gods; Hesiod; myth
theology, 6, 10, 15, 18, 43–​50, 60, 95,
109, 137; Christian, 166–​69.
See also atheism; Christianity;
Homer; theism
theos (god), 6, 10, 97–​107. See also God;
gods; theism
Thera, 28. See also literacy
Thersites, 26. See also Agamemnon;
Odysseus
Theseus, 15, 18, 83–​88, 90–​91, 125,
173nn7–​8; abduction of Persephone
by, 86; and the Minotaur, 2; ship
of, 93. See also heroes; myth;
mythology; Plutarch
Thetis, 17, 124. See also Homer
Thucydides, 90. See also history
Tiamat, 14, 20. See also Babylonians
Timaeus, 82, 100–​1. See also Plato
Time, 100, 112, 114, 117, 138. See also
universe; world
Titans, 18–​21, 23–​25, 79. See also gods;
Prometheus
Tityus, 18, 25
Torah, 13–​14, 24, 34, 153–​54. See also
Jewish scriptures; Philo; Septuagint
tragedians, 57, 66. See also playwrights;
theater
Trojan War, 9, 15–​17, 31, 84, 87, 92–​94,
155. See also Homer; Troy
Troy, 25, 31–​32. See also Homer;
Trojan War
truth, 5, 9, 33, 66, 68, 145, 149, 155, 162;
cosmological, 5, 80; literal, 123, 126,
128, 158; in myths, 5, 80, 96, 116,
123; philosophical, 139; relativity
of, 60; universal, 3. See also belief;
disbelief; skepticism
tyrant, 8, 48, 58, 92, 120. See also
political authority
Ulysses, 1. See also Odysseus
underworld, 17–​18, 135, 145, 173n8.
See also Hades; Homer; Minos;
Odysseus
231
gener al index
universality, 31. See also myth
universe, 10, 40, 49, 101, 105; creation
of the, 24, 50, 106; final cause of
motion in the, 100; origin of the,
10, 109; sensible, 138; workings of
the, 60. See also cosmos; natural
philosophy; world
Venus, 132–​33, 135–​36, 143. See also
Aphrodite; gods; sex
Vergil, 61, 91, 148–​49, 169, 180n7. See
also poetry; Rome
vice, 26, 75, 124, 135, 140. See also
moral world
violence, 22, 115. See also war
virtue, 26, 65, 75–​76, 96, 110, 124, 135,
140. See also moral world
vocabulary, 34. See also Homer; poetry
war, 15, 17. See also Trojan War; violence
War of Independence, 15
wisdom, 55. See also gods; Metis
women, 24; creation of, 14, 19, 21, 27;
Hesiod’s advice on, 24; men and,
20; subjection of, 25. See also society
world, 50–​51, 100–​1, 107; best possible,
105; of the forms, 100; god as
one with the, 50; material, 139;
materialist view of the, 51; noetic,
231
135–​39; sensible, 101. See also
cosmos; matter; universe
writing, 28–​30. See also literacy; oral
tradition; papyrus roll
Xenocrates, 100. See also
Academy; Plato
Xenophanes of Colophon, 9, 27, 40,
43–​57, 63–​71, 79–​81, 91, 101, 106,
111, 126, 150, 176n39; innovative
theology of, 45–​46, 50, 67, 98–​
99, 122. See also Hesiod; Homer;
natural philosophy; Presocratics
Yahweh, 13, 22, 24. See also God; Jewish
scriptures; Torah
Zeno, 99, 112–​13, 116–​19, 122. See also
philosophical schools; Stoics
Zeus, 4, 14–​18, 22–​26, 37–​55, 79–​89,
96–​101, 110–​17, 121, 144, 159, 172n5;
cult of, 31, 53; daughters of, 32,
77; generations made by, 21; and
humans, 17, 168; marriages of, 76;
ordering of the creation of woman
by, 2; sanctuary of, 92–​93; statue
of, 141; as supreme ruler, 24, 31, 77.
See also gods; Hera; Jupiter; Kronos;
myth; Ouranos
232