Myth, Allegory and Inspired Symbolism in Early and Late Antique Platonism

What is it about?

Plato’s denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate interpretive strategy and a way around the negative aspects of myths (their violence and so on).The Middle Platonists incorporated myth, in terms of Platonic philosophy. Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris (2nd century CE), for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth as well. This paper argues that these philosophers’ use of allegory prepared the way for the Neoplatonists treatment of myth as inspired symbolism. Proclus and Syrianus, as reported by Hermias incorporated mythical gods and goddesses into elaborate triadic formulations in order to supply vital life to a conceptual ontology. Mythos becomes another type of logos, a way to represent the invisible world of being and even a symbolic presence that could enable anagogic ascent.

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