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1. Overview: Name, Title, and Date 1. Overview: Name, Title, and Date
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2. Heraclitus and the Allegorical Tradition 2. Heraclitus and the Allegorical Tradition
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3. Allegory in Heraclitus 3. Allegory in Heraclitus
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Further Reading Further Reading
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References References
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14 Heraclitus the Allegorist, Homeric Problems
Get accessDavid Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. He is the author of Friendship in the Classical World (1997), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (2006), and most recently The Origin of Sin: Greece and Rome, Early Judaism and Christianity (2022). He is a past president of the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies), and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
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Published:20 October 2022
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Abstract
A certain Heraclitus (otherwise unknown) composed, probably around the year 100 ce, an allegorical interpretation of major scenes in the Iliad and Odyssey, bearing the title (in one manuscript), Homeric Problems: On What Homer Expressed Allegorically concerning the Gods. The ostensible purpose is to rescue Homer from the charge of blasphemy for his crude representation of the gods, for which he had been criticized by some philosophers (Heraclitus singles out Plato and Epicurus). Heraclitus employs etymology (favored by Stoics) and other devices to show that “Ares,” for example, may mean “war” rather than the god himself, and that “Apollo” (in the first book of the Iliad) stands for the sun (which brings on the plague), not the deity. Heraclitus also argues that Homer’s heroes are paradigms of virtue (e.g., Odysseus is a paragon of wisdom and endurance). The work, though rhetorical in nature, is an important complement to Pseudo-Plutarch On the Life and Poetry of Homer, Cornutus’s Compendium of Greek Theology, and other works, and a link in the development of Christian allegoresis.
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