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Allegoresis in the Fifth Century Bc Eos XCVII 2010 ISSN 0012-7825 ALLEGORESIS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY BC By MIKOŁAJ DOMARADZKI ABSTRACT: The article deals with the development of allegoresis in the fifth century BC. While the exegetical works of Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Diogenes of Apollonia are its main focus, the paper argues that the aim of these allegorists was not to exonerate Homer from the charges of immorality but rather to propagate the philosophical explanation of the world laid down by Anaxagoras. Thus, the parallel development of philosophy and allegory in the fifth century is taken to suggest that it was the flowering of the former that actuated the latter. The purpose of allegorical interpretation is to discover the hidden meaning of a text. The practice arose in the sixth century BC as a result of attempts to exonerate Homer from the charges of impiety1. In the fifth century, allegorical interpretation no longer served the purpose of exculpating the poet, since now its primary objective was to facilitate the process of replacing the mythological account of the world provided by Homer and Hesiod with a more scientific one put forward by the first philosophers. This development was reflected in two very important assumptions that were made with regard to Homer: the poet was assumed not only to have shared the full-fledged philosophical picture of the world offered by the Ionian thinkers, but also intentionally to have camouflaged it in his poems. Hence, the fifth-century allegorists participated in the process of rationalizing the then view of the world by interpreting the old narratives of Homer in accordance with the findings of Anaxagoras’ new science as deliberate allegories. While this development is clearly illustrated by the exegetical work of Metrodorus of Lampsacus and, to a lesser degree, of Diogenes of Apollonia, the present paper will focus on the two thinkers as strong allegorists, i.e., interpret- ers who read into Homer the physical teachings of Anaxagoras on the assump- tion that Homer not only prefigured the profound philosophy of Anaxagoras but also purposefully disguised it as poetry2. Accordingly, it will be shown here that 1 The sixth century allegoresis lies beyond the scope of the present paper, but see n. 13 below. 2 Thus, I agree with those scholars who assess that Metrodorus and, at least to some extent, Dio- genes interpreted Homer allegorically precisely in the strong (i.e., intentional) sense, see especially na d d a f 2009: 117. Cf. also ri c h a r d s o n 2006: 79 and lo n g 2006: 215. 234 MIKOŁAJ DOMARADZKI for Metrodorus and Diogenes Homer was an inspired sage who anticipated the “scientific” account of the universe and allegorically expressed it in his poems. As a result of this assumption, both exegetes aimed to demonstrate that a proper reading of the poet would contribute to a better understanding of the origin, struc- ture and composition of the world. While the ideas of Metrodorus and Diogenes illustrate a curious symbiotic relationship between a philosophical explanation of the world and an allegorical interpretation of the poet, the fact that both think- ers were inspired by the philosophy of Anaxagoras in their exegeses of Homer makes the parallel development of philosophy and allegory a good argument for the interrelationship between the two. Thus, the scope of the thesis advanced in the present paper is twofold: firstly, to show that the outpour of allegorical read- ings of Homer in the fifth century BC must have been actuated by the flowering of the Ionian philosophy, and secondly, to suggest that it may have contributed to the philosophical transformation of mythos into logos. A discussion of allegorical readings of Homer cannot avoid such important questions as why the allegorists chose the poet as the subject of their allegoresis and how they treated his poems. When trying to answer these questions, it is useful to avail oneself of Heraclitus’ Homeric Problems3, since the work is the largest preserved example of ancient allegoresis of Homer4. With regard to the first question the answer seems rather obvious and the parallels between the po- ems of Homer on the one hand and the Bible on the other have often been drawn. Perhaps, no one has stressed Homer’s cultural importance so fervently, though, as Heraclitus, who offers the following assessment: From the very first age of life, the foolishness of infants just beginning to learn is nur- tured on the teaching given in his [scil. Homer’s] school. One might almost say that his poems are our baby clothes, and we nourish our minds by draughts of his milk. He stands at our side as we each grow up and shares our youth as we gradually come to manhood; when we are mature, his presence within us is at its prime; and even in old age, we never weary of him. When we stop, we thirst to begin him again. In a word, the only end of Homer for human beings is the end of life (Quaest. Hom. I 5–7)5. 3 While the three most important editions are: OEL M ANN 1910; bu f f i è r e 1962; ru s s e l l , ko n - STAN 2005, I use the last one, as it is based on the most recent scholarship and contains a very good English translation. 4 At this point, it seems advisable to offer an explanation why I mention here Heraclitus’ Homeric Problems rather than the Derveni papyrus. After all, the papyrus dates from the fourth century BC (cf. e.g. fu n g h i 1997: 26; be t e g h 2004: 61; ko u r e M e n o s , Pa r Á s s o g l o u , tsantsanoglou 2006: 9; be t e g h 2007: 135 f.; fr e d e 2007: 10–12) and is, therefore, closer chronologically to the subject of the pres- ent paper than Heraclitus’ treaty which is from the first (or perhaps even second) century AD. The reasons are twofold. First of all, the subject of allegoresis in the Derveni papyrus is Orpheus rather than Homer. Secondly, and more importantly, the Derveni author does not seem to interpret Orpheus allegorically in the strong sense (cf. ra n g o s 2007: 40 f.). See also n. 6 below. 5 Translation by ru s s e l l , ko n s t a n 2005: 3. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author. ALLEGORESIS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY BC 235 When describing the role of the “Greek Bible”, Heraclitus points to Homer’s being the cornerstone of the then educational system. The metaphors he uses are very suggestive: children are “breast-fed” (τιτθεύεται) on Homer, his poems are their “swaddling clothes” (ἐνεσπαργανωμένοι) and so on. In fact, the allegorist suggests that the entire process of socialization pivots on the poet. Given the vital role that Homer’s poems had always performed in Greece, providing an expla- nation for why the fifth-century allegorists stuck to the poet is relatively easy. Clearly, Homer was still a natural candidate for a subject of allegorical inter- pretation, since having already shaped to a large extent the Greek language and thought, he continued to be the standard point of reference for the preponderance of literary and philosophical debates in the fifth century BC and, as the case of Heraclitus shows, afterwards. Thus, making use of his authority was enormously strategic, for proving that an idea was already present in the most revered and venerable poems could obviously lend credence to a novel and, therefore, per- haps slightly suspicious doctrine. For that reason allegorists from Metrodorus to Heraclitus willingly and frequently made use of the poet. With that we may pass on to the other question: for what purpose did the fifth-century allegorists employ Homer’s poems? Again, a confrontation with Heraclitus might shed some light on the characteristics of the fifth-century allegoresis. Although Heraclitus’ approach to Homer is similar to Metrodorus’ in that both thinkers interpret Homer allegorically in the strong sense, it is only the former that can be labelled as a representative of apologetic exegesis. Indeed, Heraclitus puts it in no uncertain terms that the aim of his treaty is to exculpate Homer from the charges of immorality. In the opening sentence of his work, the allegorist as- serts (Quaest. Hom. I 1) that Homer “would be totally impious, if he did not speak allegorically” (πάντα γὰρ ἠσέβησεν, εἰ μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν). Thus, Heraclitus makes it clear that he is primarily concerned with the task of defending the poet6. The matter is quite different, however, for Metrodorus who – as we shall see be- low – assumes Homer to allegorically have expressed the physical doctrine of his Anaxagoras and does not busy himself with any apology. The thinker per- ceives the poems of Homer as a repository of hidden cosmological truths that generally anticipate many ideas of the Anaxagorean school and at no time does he try to exonerate Homer from the charges of blasphemy. When subjecting Homer to allegorical interpretation and eliciting the symbolic contents of his po- ems, Metrodorus looks for purely natural causes symbolically and intentionally expressed under mythological guise in the poet. While scholars generally agree 6 Interestingly enough, in this particular aspect there is a close parallelism between the work of Heraclitus and the Derveni author, for the latter appears to have been a pious Orphic who believed both Orpheus’ revelation and Presocratic physics to be true, and who, as a result, sought rather to reconcile religion with philosophy than merely to replace the former with the latter (cf.
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