Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/451

 ALLEGORIZING TENDENCY. 413 hiry, Anaxagoras and Metrodorus carried out the allegorical ex pianation more comprehensively and systematically ; the former representing the mythical personages as mere mental conceptions, invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical pre- cepts, the latter connecting them with physical principles and phenomena. Metrodorus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but also those of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hec- tor, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the veil of allegory. 1 Empedokles, Prodikus, Antisthenes, Pannenides, Herakleides of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysip- pus, and the Stoic philosophers generally, 2 followed more or less Iliad, ignorant of their true allegorical meaning: i] ruv irfi 'O/iT/pu ro^fia Toi)f "Hpaf Ssajtovf alriarai, Kal vofti&vaiv vkj]v riva TTjg U.-&EOV Trpd? 'O/j.ijpov e^etv fiaviaf ravra 'H ov p.ep>ij on T' injio&ev, etc. h&rr&e (5' aiiroi)f on rovroig roZf ETTECLV f/crrfoo/loytyra Travrof -yeveaif, KOI TU avvtxuf pfirjvevovffi de ol 'Ava^ayopetot rovf fiv&udei<; i9eoi)f, vovv JJLEV TOV Ata, TT/V 6s 'Adrjvav rex vr ) v i e ^c. Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted in its full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by Metrodorus treat- in" 1 Odysseus and Penelope as personifications of the Sun and Moon, etc See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustande des Griechischen Helden Alters, Einlei tung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.) Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order to escape the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel. De Sophist. Elench. c. 4). soph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homerica, 92-126 ; De Stoicor. Repugn, p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5. Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16,41; ii. 24-25. u Physica ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fahulas." In the Bacchce of Euripides, Pentheus is made to deride the tale of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Tei- resias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains the story away in a sort of allegory : the f^flp^S Atdf (he says_) was a mistaken statement in place of the aldrip %& va tytwciofyiewc (Bacch 235-290). Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers in Hades, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danafds, as well as the ministers of
 * Sextus Empiric, ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De Placit. Philo-