Note 967 — Chapter XVI · GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De Placit. Philosoph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homericâ, 92-126; De Stoicor. Repugn. p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16, 41; ii. 24-25. “Physica ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fabulas.”
In the Bacchæ of Euripidês, Pentheus is made to deride the tale of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Teiresias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains the story away in a sort of allegory: the μηρὸς Διὸς (he says) was a mistaken statement in place of the αἰθὴρ χθόνα ἐγκυλούμενος (Bacch. 235-290).
Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers in Hadês,—Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaïds, as well as the ministers of penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies. The first four are emblematic descriptions of various defective or vicious characters in human nature,—the deisidæmonic, the ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man; the last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked.