persons had
spread from the Jews to other peoples, who had woven about them a web of
"fables." Alongside of Hebraism, which is Euhemeristic in principle,
allegorical methods of interpretation were put forward. The chief
representative of this tendency in earlier times is Natalis Comes (Noel du
Comte), the author of the first handbook of mythology; he directly set
himself the task of allegorising all the myths. The allegories are mostly
moral, but also physical; Euhemeristic interpretations are not rejected
either, and in several places the author gives all three explanations side
by side without choosing between them. In the footsteps of du Comte
follows Bacon, in his _De Sapientia Veterum_; to the moral and physical
allegories he adds political ones, as when Jove's struggle with Typhoeus
is made to symbolise a wise ruler's treatment of a rebellion. While these
attempts at interpretation, both the Euhemeristic and the allegorical, are
in principle a direct continuation of those of antiquity, another method
points plainly in the direction of the fantastic notions of the Middle
Ages. As early as the sixteenth century the idea arose of connecting the
theology of the ancients with alchemy. The idea seemed obvious because the
metals were designated by the names of the planets, which are also the
names of the gods. It found acceptance, and in the seventeenth century we
have a series of writings in which ancient mythology is explained as the
symbolical language of chemical processes.

Within the limits of the supernatural explanation the interest centred
more and more in a single point: the oracles. As far back as in Aquinas,
"false prophecy" is a main section in the chapter on demons, whose power
to foretell the future he expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the prediction of the future
was so strong, the ancient accounts of true prognostications were the real
prop of demonology. Hence demons generally play a great part in these
explanations, even though in other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus
Acosta in his account of the American religions; thus Voss and numerous
other writers of the seventeenth century; and it is hardly a mere
accident, one would think, when Milton specially mentions Dodona and
Delphi as the seats of worship of the Greek demons. Among a few of the
humanists we certainly find an attempt to apply the natural explanation
even here; thus Caelius Rhodigi