Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/454

 422 H1JTORY OF GREECE. the third and fourth centuries after the Christian aera, especially among the new Platonic philosophers ; being both congenial to r ipvxiKuf, in which theory Here signifies the soul; Athene, prudence, Aphrodite, desire ; Zeus, mind, etc. or orotyetaKwf, in which system Apollo signifies the s?i; Poseidon, the sea; Here, the upper stratum of the air, or cetltr ; AtheuC, the lower or denser stratum ; Zens, the upper hemisphere ; Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer thinks that all the three principles of construction may be resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither of them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure Euemer- ism ; the two latter are modes of allegory. The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine mythes is copi- ously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus and Sallustius, in Gale's collection of mythological writers. Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine origin, and the chief poets as inspired (tieohrinTot): the gods were propitious to those who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks (cap. 3 and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into five classes; theo- logical, physical, spiritual, material, and mixed. He defends the practice of speaking of the gods under the veil of allegory, much in the same way as Macrobius (in the preceding note) : he finds, moreover, a good excuse even for those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages towards a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were eminently suitable, since the mind must at once see that the facts as told are not to be taken as being themselves the real truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior truth (p. 247J. Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p. 325-332). Heraclides (not Heraclides of Pontus} carries out the process of allegorizing the Homeric mythes most earnestly and most systematically. The applica- tion of the allegorizing theory is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge of scandalous impiety iruvTy yilp Tiaeftrjaev, el fiqdev fa?itjy6p7)aev (Herac. in init. p. 407, Gale). He proves at length, that the destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad, mean nothing at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused by the heat of the summer sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424). Athene, who darts down from Olym- pus at the moment when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamem- non, and seizes him by the hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates to have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely aid of Thetis and Briareus the chains and suspension imposed upon Here the casting of Hephaestos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his fall in Lemnus the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidon, after the departure of the Greeks the amorous scene between Zeus and Here on Mount Gargarus the distribution of the universe between Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades all these he resolves into peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental 9ubstances in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a