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From Oxford Classical Dictionary, ALLEGORY, GREEK:As philosophy developed, many who valued its various doctrines were led by their admiration for the wisdom and inspiration of Homer and Hesiod to find similar views symbolically expressed in the early poetry. . . . Even the early philosophic critics of Homer's world-view accepted this standpoint, and competed with the poet by expressing their theories in 'poetic' style, whether by remoulding the myths to suit newer cosmogonies or at least by using puns, personifications, and 'enigmas', either in verse (Parmenides, Empedocles) or in prose (Anaximander, Heraclitus). Hence the belief that Homer too 'philosophized in verse', and that allegorical treatment could make his teaching fully explicit. This belief was not altogether baseless, for Homer and Hesiod contain some traces of speculative thought and some genuinely allegorical passages. [The allegorizing tendency had to wait for the development of philosophy.] Its most flourishing period was the late fifth century B. C., when Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the most thoroughgoing of all allegorists, studied Homer's 'physical' doctrines and other adherents of Anaxagoras as well as Heracliteans and Sophists specialized (as Plato shows) in the 'hidden meanings' of the poets (hyponoia: allegoria is a later word). [Negative allegory was later taken up by grammarians to explain and defend what were taken as morally offensive passages in the poets (e.g., by Theagenes of Rhegium). Positive allegory was primarily practiced by philosophers who dealt with all passages of the works, not just the morally suspect ones. Etymology was one of principal tools of allegorists. Plato attacked positive allegory as at very least substituting authority for rational argument.] [After Plato, philosophical allegory was practiced mainly by the Stoics (esp. Chrysippus), though from Zeno onward the Stoics admitted that there was some opinion in the poetry which could not be relied upon for deeper meaning. From the Middle Period of the Stoics, less attention was paid to allegory. It was finally revived by the Neoplatonists in the first centuries of our era.] [Allegory continued among the grammarians--esp. by Crates who was influenced by the Stoics. The interesting Questiones Homericae attributed to Heraclitus is a product of this school. Given the possibilities that Homer erred or allegorized, they chose allegory. Strabo saw myth as the "treacle disguising the pill of historical and philosophical truth"] (46). [Allegory itself is rare among the Greeks; Plato's Parable of the Cave and his Story of Er are two of the few instances of it. ]
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