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On the History of Allegorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. Tate
Affiliation:
The University, St. Andrews

Extract

I have shown in an earlier article that from the second half of the fifth century onwards the desire to defend Homer and Hesiod against accusations of immorality was certainly not the main motive which actuated the allegorical interpreters of the early poets. That desire, no doubt, existed; but the part which it played was wholly a subordinate one. In the present article I propose first to consider allegorism in its earlier stages, and to state my case for holding that the practice of allegorical interpretation cannot have originated in this desire of Homeric partisans to exculpate the poet. My view is that the function of allegorism was originally not negative or defensive but rather (as with Anaxagoras, Metrodorus, etc., in later times) positive or exegetical.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1934

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References

page 105 note 1 C.Q. XXIII pp. 142 sqq.

page 105 note 2 Sikes, E. E., The Greek View of Poetry, pp. 12–3Google Scholar. I fear that Mr. Sikes has misunderstood my remarks on the nature of Pherecydes' allegorism. This may be my fault, and I have tried to explain myself more clearly in the present article. But it is surprising to find Mr. Sikes repeating (p. 72) the old error of referring to Xen, . Symp. 3, 6Google Scholar as proof of the statement (quite unfounded, as I showed in C.Q. XXIV pp. 4 sqq.) that the Cynics (i.e. Antisthenes) were fond of allegorism and transmitted the practice to the Stoics; and equally surprising to find him a little later (pp. 168–9) adopting (with due acknowledgements)my view of the matter, apparently without noticing that he thereby involves himself in a notable self-contradiction.

page 105 note 3 Frr. 11, 18 (Diels); D.L. IX 18; cf. Empedocles, fr. 4.

page 105 note 4 D.L. VIII 21.

page 105 note 5 Frr. 57, 104.

page 105 note 6 Fr. 42; Plutarch, , Camill. 19Google Scholar; fr. 28 (see also Burnet, , E.G.P. c. 111)Google Scholar; fr. 40.

page 106 note 1 Frr. 32, 94.

page 106 note 2 D.L. VIII 57.

page 106 note 3 Frr. 6, 4, 146.

page 106 note 4 Fr. 93.

page 107 note 1 Hence Homer, Hesiod, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles were classed together as men who ‘philosophized in poetry’ (see e.g. D.L. IX 22).

page 107 note 2 C.R. XLI pp. 214–5, where I also showed how the late allegorists support my view as to the origin of allegorism.

page 108 note 1 Plato's Cratylus analyses this notion so far as concerns the etymological side of allegorism. Thanks to divine inspiration words resemble the things they name; and therefore a likeness between words—even of different languages—points to a real connection between the realities denoted by them. Examples of such significant puns could be multiplied from Homer, (e.g. Od. I 62)Google Scholar, the Homeric Hymns, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus (Agam. 689: some divinity gaveiHelen herappropriate name; cf. Plato, , Crat. 438c)Google Scholar. The Orphics and Pythagoreans believed in, or at any rate exploited, this kind of word-play (e.g. the doctrine that the body is the tomb of the soul could not fail to be most impressive in the form σ⋯μα σ⋯μα); one is reminded also of the hymn quoted in Plato, , Phaedrus 252bGoogle Scholar, with its explanation of ɛρωσ as πρως as πΤήρως in the language of the gods. Cf. also the allegory in Gorg. 493, with its plays on σ⋯μα σ⋯μα πιθος πιθανός, etc. The popular love of puns, riddles and circumlocutions is one of the minor factors which helped to bring about such allegorism as that practised by the Stoics. (Another factor though this is more doubtful—may have been the mysteries which, according to Hatch, E., Hibbert Lectures, 1888, pp. 59 sqq.Google Scholar, referring to Heraclitus, , Quaest. Hom. 6Google Scholar, and the well-known passages of Demetrius and Philo on the subject, ‘habituated the Greek mind to symbolical expression’ of religious and moral truth).

page 109 note 1 Though the cases are not exactly parallel, it is worth mentioning, in support of my views, that the allegorical interpretation of Virgil did not arise out of any desire to defend the poet (Comparetti, v., V. in the M.A., I viii)Google Scholar.

page 109 note 2 , Ps.-Plutarch, Vit. Horn. 106Google Scholar; Heraclitus, , Quaest. Hom. 49Google Scholar, similarly states that Homer knew as much astronomy as Eudoxus and Aratus, and that his learning was as extensive as that of Eratosthenes. It is admitted that Homer omitted some of the details; but both gram- marians explain this fact by a consideration which comes as a welcome gleam of sanity: Homer had a different aim from such philosophers, to write the Iliad, not to explain natural phenomena.

page 109 note 3 The Stoic authorities followed by Cicero in the De Nat. Deor. apparently occupied a position midway between that of Zeno and that of Cornutus on the question how far the early poets admitted errors and fictions which ought not to be allegorically interpreted. See C.Q. XXIV p. 9 and XXIII pp. 41 sqq. It is noteworthy that Balbus refuses to allegorize the Theomachy. Evidently the Stoic or MiddleStoic position is much more judicious than that of the grammarians, who (from Theagenes onwards) made much of that passage.

page 109 note 4 On Heraclitus, see C.Q. XXIV pp. 1 sqqGoogle Scholar. He calls the Stoics ‘the greatest philosophers’; but that does not make him either a Stoic or a philosopher, . Q.H. 22–3Google Scholar offers a good example of Heraclitus' sublime impartiality; the number of the elements according to Homer is either one or two or four or five.

page 110 note 1 The belief in the wisdom of the poets was the basis of Stoic allegorism: C.Q. XXII pp. 66, 68, XXIII p. 42.

page 110 note 2 E.g. the plague in Il. I was not the wrath of a god but ‘an accident of the atmosphere’ (Q.H. 11).

page 110 note 3 De Aud. Poet. 15B. Cf. Plato, , Rep. 607cGoogle Scholar.

page 110 note 4 Such is the implication of Plato, , Phaedr. 230aGoogle Scholar. Heraclitus (Q.H.) and Maximus of Tyre complain that Homer is read not for his deeper meanings but for the charm and interest of his narrative. Popular didacticism no doubt admitted (Strabo I 2, 17) that Homer's work was a philosophic treatise; but this was a ‘pious opinion’ that most people would shrink from putting into practice by means of allegorism.

page 110 note 5 De Aud. Poet. 19E, 31E.

page 110 note 6 Maximus is the first extant writer (as Proclus is the last) to make a serious attempt to reconcite Homer and Plato. He has a far greater respect for the poet as savant than those Stoics who from Zeno onward admitted in varying degrees the existence of ignorance and opinion in Homer, . See C.Q. XXIII p. 42, XXIV pp. 2 sqqGoogle Scholar.

page 110 note 7 See also C.Q. XXIII p. 149.

page 111 note 1 Orat. IV 136b, V 170abc.

page 111 note 2 Orat. IV 136c, 137c, 149c, VII 206c sqq.; epist. 301a, 422 sqq.

page 112 note 1 , Xen., Mem. I 3Google Scholar, 7 (moralization of the story of Circe); Symp. VIII 28 sqq. (the etymology of Ganymede as meaning ‘rejoicing in counsel’ explains why he was the favourite of Zeus). Socrates used such interpretations ‘in jest but with a serious meaning’. Cf. Plato, Crat. passim. It looks as if Socrates, thoughfree from all superstitious reverence for the poets, could, when the whim seized him, ironically outdo the ingenuity of all the sophists in all forms of poetic exegesis.

page 112 note 2 Where δίκη in the quotation means ‘justice’ for Plato, though he no doubt knew that it had a different meaning for Homer.

page 112 note 3 As Chrysippus’ admissions on the subject of his etymologies would suggest; see C.Q. XXIV p. 3 n. 3.

page 112 note 4 C.Q. XXIII p. 154.

page 113 note 1 Sikes, , op. cit., pp. 19 sqqGoogle Scholar. There are a few exceptional passages where Plato appears to accept the Homeric, as opposed to the Dionysiac. view of inspiration, e.g. Laws VII 804a, quoting Od. III 26 sqq.

page 113 note 2 Cf. Thomson, J. A. K., Studies in the Odyssey, p. 185Google Scholar; C.Q. XXIII p. 148.

page 113 note 3 Od. XXII 347.

page 113 note 4 Essays and Addresses pp. 63 sqq.

page 113 note 5 Od. III 267 sqq. The old grammarians (Schol. ad loc., Athenaeus I xxiv, Strabo I 2, 3, , ps.-Plutarch, Vit. Horn. 213)Google Scholar thought that Agamemnon chose a bard for this post because of the moral tendency of poetry. Empiricus, SextusAdv. Mus. II, 26)Google Scholar objected that this poet-moral- ist made a bad job of Clytemnestra.

page 113 note 6 Od. XXII 356.

page 113 note 7 Calhoun, G. M., The Growth of Criminal Law in Ancient Greece, c. IIGoogle Scholar.

page 113 note 8 Od. VIII 487 sqq.

page 113 note 9 Theog. 26 sqq.

page 113 note 10 Fr. 150. Cf. ol. Ill 10 (the poet's strains are ‘heaven-sent’), Paean IX 34 (the poet is prompted by some divine power to compose a noble strain).

page 113 note 11 Ol. II 83.

page 113 note 12 Ol. II 86: the true poet ‘knows much by gift of nature’; and that the gift of nature is also the gift of God is clear from Ol. IX 100 sqq., where, after saying ‘that which is by nature is altogether best’, he adds immediately that it is better to pass over in silence everything in which God has no part.

page 113 note 13 Isthm. V 28; though mere learning is of no avail, Ol. II 86.

page 114 note 1 Nem. VII 20 sqq.; cf. Ol. I 28.

page 114 note 2 Laws 719; cf. Phaedr. 245a, Ion 534c, A pol. 22b, etc.

page 114 note 3 Plato, , Rep. 598eGoogle Scholar, , Xen., Symp. IV 67Google Scholar.

page 114 note 4 Frr. 18, 21.

page 114 note 5 Meno 99, Ion 534, etc.

page 114 note 6 C.Q. XXIII pp. 147 sqq.

page 114 note 7 C.Q. XXII pp. 71–2.

page 114 note 8 Phaedr. 269–70.

page 114 note 9 , Ps.-Plut., Vit. Hom. 218Google Scholar.

page 114 note 10 C.Q. XXII p. 72 n. 2, XXIV p. 4.