which it hides and reveals. To Cleanthes at the
beginning of it the Universe was a mystic pageant, in which the immortal
stars were the dancers and the Sun the priestly torch-bearer.[165:2]
Chrysippus reduced the Homeric gods to physical or ethical principles;
and Crates, the great critic, applied allegory in detail to his
interpretation of the all-wise poet.[166:1] We possess two small but
complete treatises which illustrate well the results of this tendency,
Cornutus +peri theon+ and the _Homeric Allegories_ of Heraclitus, a
brilliant little work of the first century B. C. I will not dwell upon
details: they are abundantly accessible and individually often
ridiculous. A by-product of the same activity is the mystic treatment of
language: a certain Titan in Hesiod is named Koios. Why? Because the
Titans are the elements and one of them is naturally the element of
+Koiotes+, the Ionic Greek for 'Quality'. The Egyptian Isis is derived
from the root of the Greek +eidenai+, Knowledge, and the Egyptian Osiris
from the Greek +hosios+ and +hiros+ ('holy' and 'sacred', or perhaps
more exactly 'lawful' and '_tabu_'). Is this totally absurd? I think
not. If all human language is, as most of these thinkers believed, a
divine institution, a cap filled to the brim with divine meaning, so
that by reflecting deeply upon a word a pious philosopher can reach the
secret that it holds, then there is no difficulty whatever in supposing
that the special secret held by an Egyptian word may be found in Greek,
or the secret of a Greek word in Babylonian. Language is One. The Gods
who made all these languages equally could use them all, and wind them
all intricately in and out, for the building up of their divine enigma.

We must make a certain effort of imagination to understand this method
of allegory. It is not the frigid thing that it seems to us. In the
first place, we should remember that, as applied to the ancient
literature and religious ritual, allegory was at least a _vera
causa_--it was a phenomenon which actually existed. Heraclitus of
Ephesus is an obvious instance. He deliberately expressed himself in
language which should not be understood of the vulgar, and which bore a
hidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras did the same. The prophets
and religious writers must have done so to an even greater
extent.[167:1] And we know enough of the history of ritual to be sure
that a great deal of it is definitely allegorical. The Helleni