Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/453

 PAUSANIAS AND HIS VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 421 stories current and accredited respecting the gods. 1 And others, arguing from the analogy of the religious mysteries, which could not be divulged without impiety to any except such as had been specially admitted and initiated, maintained that it would be a profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the genuine scheme of nature and the divine administration : the ancient poets and philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking to the many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for privileged and qualified intelligences. 2 The allegorical mode of explaining the ancient fables 3 became more and more popular in 1 Pausan. viii. 8, 2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. p. 474), allegory is admitted to a certain extent in the fables by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. The fragment of the lost treatise of Plutarch, on the Platsean festival of the Dsedala, is very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p. 754-763, ed. Wyt. ; ap. Euseb. Praepar. Evang. iii. 1). fabula and fdbulosa narratio : the former is fiction pure, intended either to amuse or to instruct the latter is founded upon truth, either respecting human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to be publicly talked of (according to his view) except under the respectful veil of a fabh (the same feeling as that of Herodotus, which led him to refrain from insert- ing the lepol hbyoi in his history). The supreme god, the ru-yadtiv, the TrpuTov aiTiov, could not be talked of in fables : but the other gods, the ae'ria. or sethereal powers and the soul, might be, and ought to be, talked of in that manner alone. Only superior intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge of the secret reality. ' De Diis caeteris, et de anima, non frustra se, nee ut oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt ; sed quia sciunt inimicam esse naturae aper- tam nudamque expositioncm sui : quse sicut vulgaribus sensibus hominum intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine operimentoque, subtraxit ; ita pru dentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari Adeo semper ita se et sciri et coli numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est, Secundum hsec Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quo- que et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: necsecus Timseus." Compare also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert, x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans to literal historical fact (Adv. Gentcs, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.> Eespecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek fables, Bottiger (Die Kunst Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii. p. 17GJ Nitzech (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78) ; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 133-155). 'According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script. Myth, p, 328), every personal or denominated god may be construed in three different ways : either Trpajyzan/cwf (historically, as having been a king or a man)'
 * This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He distinguishes between