On Allegory

Category:

1 Introduction

In modern English, as Wikipedia defines it, “an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance.”

Specifically, “[m]any allegories use personification of abstract concepts”, so that “[t]he use of allegory can be traced at least back to Homer in his ‘quasi-allegorical’ use of personifications of, e.g., Terror (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos)”.

However, the article goes on to say, it is Theagenes of Rhegium, an interpreter of Homer, whom the grammarian-philosopher Porphyry of Tyre calls the “first allegorist”. There is also Pherecydes of Syros, “often presumed to be the first writer of prose”, which “[s]ome scholars […] argue […] anticipated Theagenes [sic] allegorical work, illustrated especially by his early placement of Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods, which is thought to be a reinterpretation of the titan [sic] Kronos, from more traditional genealogies.”

Other examples from antiquity given on Wikipedia are the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic and Martianus Capella’s Philologia; further, it is said that “the Neoplatonic philosophy developed a type of allegorical reading of Homer and Plato.”

This is, to be blunt, a patchwork of mistakes. Now, it is unremarkable to find errors on Wikipedia; but unfortunately, the article is more or less true to how the topic is discussed by Classicists. Corrections are therefore in order.

2 What is allegory?

The most fundamental point to make is that the ancients mean by allēgoría something other than we do by ‘allegory’. In ancient Greek, the word refers to a rhetorical trope, or a mode of speaking; in modern English, it does so as well, to an extent, but it can alternatively refer to a whole work of art or literature, or a section of it, as “an” allegory. Thus, in English, we might reasonably refer to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” (even if no ancient writer calls it that), or call Capella’s Philologia “an allegory”, but we need to keep this strictly separate from our understanding of the ancient usage.

In other words, we have to know whether we are looking at the history of allegory in the modern sense, which includes much that the ancients did not call by that term, or at the genealogy of allēgoría–allegory, where the changes in meaning and reference are a special point of interest.

So, now that we know that allegory in the ancient sense is not “a narrative […] representation”, but rather a rhetorical figure or mode of representation used in narrative – or rather, in discourse generally –, let us look at ancient definitions to get a more concrete sense of this trope, independently of modern conceptions.

The grammarian Tryphon II, On Tropes, writes: “Allegory is an expression which refers to one thing by proper meaning (kyríōs), but indicates an understanding (énnoia) of something else. People must apply allegory when, for reasons of disrection or shamefulness, they cannot speak clearly. Callimachus uses this trope in the Iambs: […]

/ In Dionysii Thracis

The rhetorician Tiberius, On Demosthenes’ Figures 24, writes: “Allegory is when one translates a part of the proper meaning (tà kýria) into metaphors which can signify the proper meaning (tò kýrion); and this figure is very common and prominent in (Demosthenes). In Against Midias: ‘To be wicked with power and wealth is a wall against suffering anything from an attack; because if this man were deprived of his property, he would seem absolutely unworthy.’ Now, I think this has been made clear; for here, he has resolved(?) the whole image of the wall.”

Both writers are describing the same phenomenon, albeit from different perspectives: Tiberius speaks from that of the writer, who starts with a proper meaning in their head and expresses it allegorically in different words, while Tryphon takes on the view of the reader, who has words and their proper meaning in front of them, and interprets them allegorically in their head. In this context, we might say, ‘proper meaning’ is a relational term.

However, in Tiberius we can also see a slippage between allegory and metaphor, which is at odds with other ancient theorists, as we will see in the next section.

Or the Latin grammarian Aelius Donatus, in the Ars Maior: “Allegory is a trope whereby something other is signified than is said, like ‘now it is time to free the steaming necks of the horses’ (Vergil, Georgics 2.542), that is, to end the song. And there are many kinds of it, of which seven stand out: irony, antiphrasis, enigma (‘riddle’), charientism, proverb, sarcasm, and astismos (‘urbanity’).”

The same example, but a more precise definition is given by another Latin grammarian, Charisius, in his own Art: “Allegory is speech which says one thing, but signifies another, by means of an obscure similarity or contrariety.”

A longer account is given by Demetrius:

Tryphon I: Peri ainigmatos
Diogenianus, Proverbs, pr.

ouk en uponoia – ouk en ainigmw – ouk en allhgoria

All this hews very closely to the surface meaning of ‘allegory’, as saying (agoreúein) something different (állon) than is meant to be understood.

3 Allegory in practice

Porphyry, Servius, Homer scholia (!), Hermogenes, Menander Rhetor, Longinus, Nicolaus‘ Progymnasmata, Demetrius, etc.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Strabo? Philo
Servius!!
? Clement of Alexandria
[‚Poetic licence‘?]

Dio kai ta musthria en allhgoriais …

4 What allegory is not

metonymy, metaphor, prosopopoiia, etc.

However, the article goes on to say, it is Theagenes of Rhegium, an interpreter of Homer, whom the grammarian-philosopher Porphyry of Tyre calls the “first allegorist”. There is also Pherecydes of Syros, “often presumed to be the first writer of prose”, which “[s]ome scholars […] argue […] antipicated Theagenes [sic] allegorical work, illustrated especially by his early placement of Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods, which is thought to be a reinterpretation of the titan [sic] Kronos, from more traditional genealogies.”

Other examples from antiquity given on Wikipedia are the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic and Martianus Capella’s Philologia; further, it is said that …

5 The Neoplatonists and allegory

Now, to our final topic, namely the claim that “the Neoplatonic philosophy developed a type of allegorical reading of Homer and Plato.” The very short response to this is that the Neoplatonists themselves, at least, did not think that this is what they were doing. Plotinus and Proclus never use the word allēgoría at all; nor do Sallustius or the emperor Julian in their exegeses of mythology. In a word, allegory is the furthest thing from being characteristic of Neoplatonic philosophy.

But that is not all there is to say, since (a) some philosophers who were Neoplatonists used allegory, only not because they were Neoplatonists, and (b) when modern writers talk about Neoplatonic allegory, they are referring to something real, just not to real allēgoría.

allēgoría in writers who happen to Neoplatonists

[Porphyry (Homeric Questions, Cult Statues, On Styx, Cave), Olympiodorus, David, Syrianus, Lydus]

so-called Neoplatonic allegory

[hypono-: Porphyry, Plotinus, Syrianus, Proclus, Olympiodorus, Damascius?, Simplicius? (Hermias different)]
[ainigm-/ainitt-, symbol-]
[synthêma, ‚trace‘, etc.!?]
[In Homerum: apo Qeagenous tou Rhginou]
[Lamberton: p. 115 Porphyry on Circe! Lamberton is too vague about the ancient rameworks. p. 122 on poetic licence, p. 124 on rejection of myths despite secondary meaning, p. 128 intention – historical fact – riddle – fabrication, p. 136 Julian rejects hyponoia. || In discussion of Sallustius, Lamberton misses the innovations that move away from allegory, and relatedly he misrepresents Julian as a naive(?) literalist. || p. 164 bad take on Proclus, better: p. 169f, p. 172 (quote, Zeus and Hera)]
[allegorical interpretation of Plato: ’Clarifications’ of Obscurity: Proclus’ Allegorical Reading of Plato’s Parmenides]
[Proclus on the different modes of expressing the same things about the gods]