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The Cave of the NymphsAt the head of the harbor is a slender-leaved olive ― 120 ― Inside, too, are massive stone looms and there the nymphs
This strange passage of the Odyssey , situated at the crucial moment of Odysseus's magical return to Ithaca, has the distinction of being the subject of the earliest surviving interpretive critical essay in the European tradition. If we think of Aristotle's Poetics , Horace's Ars poetica , and "Longinus" On the Sublime as the seminal works of ancient literary criticism, it is primarily because of their vast influence. The interpretive tradition in ancient criticism has not fared as well, and today is largely lost or ignored. If we ask ourselves what "literary criticism" has meant since the eighteenth century, however, we must answer that it is an activity inseparable from interpretation. The critic preeminently mediates between reader and text, and if we would discover the ancient precedents for this activity, Porphyry has a better claim to our attention than Aristotle or Horace. Before examining the essay on the cave of the nymphs itself, a word should be said about the problem of its internal contradictions and of the implied contradictions in Porphyry's exegetical method. The most recent scholar to examine the issue has been lean Pépin, whose conclusions help to clarify Porphyry's intentions and method.[105] Karl Praechter had emphasized the contradictions within the essay and the incompatibility of the various levels of interpretation offered by Porphyry.[106] He had ex- [105] Pépin, "Porphyre, exégète d'Homère." [106] Karl Praechter, "Richtungen und Schulen im Neuplatonismus." Cf. Pépin, "Porphyre, exégète d'Homère," p. 243 and note. ― 121 ― plained this tendency in terms of Porphyry's attachment to ethics (and so to moral allegory, even when this was in contradiction with his other assertions about the meaning of the passage) and love of scholarship for its own sake. Pépin went one step further to suggest that, in spite of the apparent contradictions and of the perceptiveness of Praechter's observations, a subtle method lies behind the presentation of the mutually conflicting allegories, a "calculated pluralism" building out of sometimes discordant elements a cumulative interpretive statement with a coherence of its own.[107] This, surely, is closer to the truth. The contradictions within Porphyry's demands on the text are, I would argue, genuine, reflecting the doubts expressed in the first passage from The Styx discussed above. The fact that the interpretations offered do not always fit one another is, however, to be viewed in the light of earlier approaches to Homer. For an exegete who is committed to articulating the meaning of a text in all its richness, and who, having accepted the presence of a second level of meaning behind the first, is quite willing to multiply those levels, the fact that the various levels of meaning begin to enter into contradiction is relatively unimportant. All enhance the text. There remains, throughout the essay, an unresolved dichotomy between the Porphyry who would make only the most reasonable and methodologically conservative demands upon the text of Homer and the Porphyry who is forced, by the nature of the text under discussion, to extend beyond that text the search for the key to its less obvious meanings. This description recalls the position of Strabo with regard to Homer and to the interpretation of myth,[108] and indeed at one extreme Porphyry is surprisingly close to the geographer's attitude. This affinity is reflected not only in Porphyry's demand that the description of the cave reflect a geographical and historical reality but, more intimately, in his choice of vocabulary. At the beginning of the essay, after pointing out the problem of extracting the meaning of the text under consideration, Porphyry turns first to Cronius,[109] according to whom the geographers make no mention of such a cave as Homer describes. As we later learn, Porphyry is proud that he has looked more carefully than Cronius had and has discovered a geographer to corroborate Homer's account. For the moment, however, the paraphrase of Cronius continues, examining the possibility that Ho- [107] Pépin, "Porphyre, exégète d'Homère," pp. 243-49. [108] See ch. 1C above. [109] ― 122 ― mer "fabricated the cave out of poetic license":
(De ant . 55.17-18).[110] This expression, whether from Cronius or original with Porphyry, is unequivocally pejorative here. Though he never articulates the idea, Porphyry seems to admit two possible modes of artistic creation, both of them mimetic. One is mimetic in the humble sense that it represents objects and events in this world with more or less fidelity. Writing of this sort responds to the demands we make on the works of historians and geographers, demands that Porphyry would also make upon the text of Homer. The second sort of mimetic art, of a type not seriously explored before Plotinus,[111] leaps the intermediary of the world of the senses and imitates a higher reality. It remains, however, mimetic, determined by something outside itself. The "poetic license" to which Porphyry casually refers here would not produce art of the latter sort. Rather, it recalls Strabo's discussion of Homer's uneven reliability, where precisely the same definition occurs: "poetic license, which is a mixture of history, rhetoric, and myth."[112] The liberty or "license" of Homer, for Strabo, is his mixing together of historically accurate descriptions with material of other sorts and leaving the reader to distinguish among these elements.[113] Porphyry's use of the term is slightly different. He seems to identify "poetic license" with all the elements of Homer's poetry that are not historically sound. He goes on to argue that if the passage in question is, in fact, an imaginative construct, it is an unconvincing, improbable one. At the opposite pole from that of the critic who shies away from the [110] In text and notes, references to Porph. De ant . are to page and line of Nauck's text, except in the summary in this chapter, where reference is to the numbered sections. [111] On Plotinus's location of the beauty of art "on a level with the beauty of nature as a way to the intelligible beauty," see Armstrong in CHLGEMP, pp. 232-34, with references. The Phaedrus provides a precedent but does not diminish the originality of Plotinus's esthetics. [112] See note 113, below. [113] Indeed, one has the strong impression here that either Cronius or Porphyry is echoing Strabo:
― 123 ― "poetic license" of Homer is the position, emerging gradually in the essay, of the critic who in every phrase of the Homeric passage finds new intimations of a truth that lies beyond the apparent meaning of the words. The effect is cumulative, and one has the impression that Porphyry is, by sheer weight of evidence, winning himself away from his skepticism in the direction of a genuine faith in the coherence of the passage as a statement of great complexity, neither historically mimetic nor mere "poetic license," but imitating a transcendent reality. An important impulse in this transition from skeptical questioning to a vision of a rich and complex structure of meaning is an explicit urge to find—or to impose—order, an impulse that goes hand in hand with a repeatedly expressed horror of the possibility of randomness. It becomes increasingly clear that randomness (or chains of causality that escape him) are intolerable to Porphyry, whether in the poem—which could not have been composed "with what came to hand, randomly,"[114] or "according to some sort of chance,"[115] —or in the universe that is the archetype of the cave Homer describes: "The cosmos has not come into being in vain or randomly."[116] The element in the world that assures this order is divine purpose
, which negates randomness, just as "the theologian [i.e., Homer] indicates [in the olive tree and its placement] that the universe did not come into being spontaneously, the creation of irrational chance, but rather is the result of noetic nature and wisdom."[117] The fact that, at the opening of his essay, Porphyry cites the entire eleven-line passage on which he intends to comment places the exegesis of the cave of the nymphs in a unique position in ancient criticism. The discussion sometimes departs conspicuously from the text, but it always returns sooner or later to Homer's words , and specifically to the series of internal problems apparently first raised by Cronius (De ant ., section 3). We are not dealing here with explication of a Homeric myth, but rather with that of a specific passage of a special sort, one so problematical that it cannot simply be paraphrased. Each phrase, each element of the description, must be interrogated separately in the attempt, first, to establish the structure of meaning—in this case, to establish that the superficial meaning cannot exhaust the significance of the passage—and then [114][115][116][117] ― 124 ― to explore the deeper meaning, to articulate it in all its richness. It is doubtful whether any other thinker in antiquity combined the philological skill and seriousness of Porphyry with a comparable desire to interrogate the meaning of the Homeric poems in all their implications. The result bears more than a superficial resemblance to a modern essay in interpretation, though its emphasis on Homer as a source of information concerning prehistoric religion and on comparanda from various sorts of ritual make it appear a curiously unbalanced one. It is likewise an unavoidably naive explication. When Porphyry abandons his down-to-earth, Strabonic approach to the passage, he rapidly moves to the other pole of his critical perspective and begins to sound like a preacher elaborating on a text. Much of what should lie between these poles—between the philological-historical discussion and the assertion that the passage "hints at" a reality Homer refused to express directly—is missing.[118] The first problem is to establish that the cave and its description do, in fact, "hint at" some further truth. Porphyry was by no means consistent in his thinking on the indications within a text that may steer the interpreter in the direction of identifying a secondary meaning. As Pépin points out, he rejected the allegorical reading of the Gospel of John 6.53 ("If you eat not of the flesh...") on the basis that the literal meaning was repulsive.[119] An unacceptable surface meaning would thus make a passage unacceptable as a candidate for interpretation on the level of secondary meanings. This may be a distant echo of Socrates' rejection of certain Hesiodic and Homeric myths "whether understood according to secondary meanings or not."[120] It is clear, in any case, that Porphyry reacts to Christian ritual cannibalism much in the same way Socrates is depicted as reacting to the myth of the castration of Ouranos—if the surface is unacceptable, it is superfluous to look behind it. The opposite position was, of course, one of the fundamental tenets of the defensive allegorists: an unacceptable surface was in fact a primary indicator that some deeper meaning was being expressed behind the screen.[121] [118] We know that texts from earlier philosophers were read aloud in Plotinus's circle as a basis for lectures or discussions (Porph. Vit. Plot . 14.10-14), and it is a distinct possibility that the methodology of Porphyry's exegesis of the description of the cave must be traced to that oral context. [119] Pépin, "Porphyre, exégète d'Homère," p. 236. [120] Plato Rep . 2.378d. [121] For a collection of ancient loci for this idea, see Pépin, "Porphyre, exégète d'Homère," pp. 252-56. ― 125 ― The attitude that Porphyry adopts at the beginning of the essay is closer to the second of the two just mentioned. He is dependent upon Cronius, whose testimony on this matter he later qualifies to such an extent that we are left with a serious problem in the logic of the demonstration that the passage is to be viewed as the vehicle of a profound statement. Cronius is credited with the observation that Homer described a cave dedicated to the nymphs on Ithaca that did not exist according to the geographers. On the basis that it was both geographically inaccurate and filled with obscurities that made it implausible as a purely imaginative creation, he concluded that the passage was allegorical
, not an example of "poetic license" (Porph. De ant . 56.8).[122] The implication is that the surface is unacceptable (implausible) and so for that very reason the passage must contain some deeper meaning that will provide the missing links and restore harmony. At this point, Porphyry interrupts Cronius to undercut him. Cronius, along with all the others who have approached the passage as a purely Homeric creation, has been careless. Porphyry's pride in his scholarship is all but audible: he has located a passage in the geographer Artemidorus of Ephesus (fl. ca. 100 B.C. ) that, admittedly in the most general terms, describes the cave or at least attests its historical reality (De ant. , section 4). His conclusion is initially disarming. He has destroyed the logic of Cronius's demonstration that the passage is allegorical, only to attempt to restore it by claiming that it really makes no difference whether, in exploring the obscurities signalled by Cronius, we are exploring the poet's symbols or those of the people who consecrated the cave. In fact, to the extent that Homer is describing a historically and geographically authentic shrine of the nymphs, he is acting as intermediary for the wisdom of the ancients who, even before his own time, established the cult. This does not, of course, restore Cronius's logic. Porphyry leaves us in limbo: we do not know to what extent we are explicating a Homeric text with a complex structure of meaning and to what extent we are exploring the symbolism of a real shrine accurately described by Homer. The cave, in any case, is real.[123] [122] [123] There seems to be little doubt that the description in Artemidorus—per-haps that in the Odyssey as well—refers to a cave in the bay of Polis on Ithaca, excavated by Sylvia Benton in the 1930s. See her "Excavations in Ithaca iii: the Cave of Polis," parts 1 and 2. The cave seems to have been associated with Odysseus at least from the Geometric period, and there are inscribed dedications to the nymphs beginning at least as early as the end of the third century B.C. Such a cult in Ithaca associated with Odysseus is likewise mentioned by Heliodorus (Eth . 5.22). ― 126 ― Porphyry, one feels, would be happier if the description could be shown to be entirely accurate and historical. This would presumably remove any possibility that Homer has introduced some random, and therefore meaningless, element. Had the detailed description of the cave come from Pausanias, rather than Homer, much of Porphyry's commentary might have been no different. The core of the essay is carefully contrived to avoid this problem and treats the elements of the description simply as data on early religion. Homer's intention is relegated to obscurity. We are apparently to assume that he is merely transmitting a description aspiring to photographic realism. It is only toward the end of the essay, and in particular in the discussion of the olive tree by the cave and in Porphyry's concluding remarks, that we unequivocally confront the problem of Homer's creative contribution and its significance, and there we find Porphyry making very remarkable claims for the scope and nature of Homer's intention. The central part of the essay need occupy us only briefly. Much of the material is Numenian and has thus already been discussed.[124] After establishing the basic methodology sketched out above (section 4), Porphyry proceeds to discuss in general terms the symbolism of caves in "ancient" theology, asserting that they were consecrated to the cosmos. They were appropriate symbols for this purpose, able to be called both "murky" or "misty"
and "lovely"
, despite the apparent contradiction, because of their nature and the possibility of viewing them from several perspectives (section 6). This passage is particularly interesting because it suggests that the juxtaposition of the adjectives in the line and nearby it a lovely and murky cave
was for Porphyry (as for Cronius before him) a paradox requiring resolution. In other words, the associations, negative and positive, of Homer's vocabulary are a key to the elucidation of meaning, at least to the extent [124] See ch. 2B above. ― 127 ― that the juxtaposition of a pejorative adjective with another having pleasant associations triggers the response in these readers that the passage requires further examination. Porphyry's solution draws into the discussion of the text and its apparent contradictions the Neoplatonic model of perception postulating that, just as the human being exists on multiple levels—soul in all its complexity, and beyond soul, mind—so perception is possible on these various levels. In terms of our everyday perceptions, the cave is "lovely"; that is, to our normal fragmented perceptions, it offers the pleasing spectacle of form imposed on inert matter. We view it as participants in the flux and disorder of this world and by means of the senses, which themselves are bound to matter. It thus intimates a higher reality—that of form—and so gives us pleasure. At the same time, "seen from the point of view of one who sees more deeply into it and penetrates it by the use of mind,"[125] it is "murky." That is, for the observer who has the perspective gained by the full realization of
, the adjective
(with its strongly pejorative cast) will be appropriate because, able to contemplate the forms themselves, he will see in the cave not matter beautified by form but rather form obscured by matter. The multiple valid perspectives and modes of perception implied by such an epistemology are at the core of the Neoplatonists' perception of meaning in the literary artifact, as indeed in any other object in the universe, or in the universe itself.[126] Porphyry's assertion of the existence of numerous valid possibilities in the interpretation of a single text is thus by no means evidence of a lack of clearly defined principles of interpretation, but rather a logical consequence of Neoplatonic psychology and epistemology.[127] The essay proceeds quite deliberately, considering the elements of the passage phrase by phrase as they occur. The word that arrests Porphyry's attention longest is, of course, "cave," which triggers an extensive recital of material from various sources on caves as sanctuaries (sections 6-10), which is gradually turned into an explanation of the specific appropriateness of caves to the Naiad Nymphs (sections 7-13), themselves identified with souls entering the material universe (sections 12-13). The elucidation of the "symbols" seems to belong to the field of comparative [125] [126] See ch. 5D, with n. 87, below, for Sallustius's observation that "the cosmos as well may be called a myth." [127] This model is applied systematically only in Proclus, where principles merely implied in Porphyry are fully articulated. See ch. 5 below. ― 128 ― religion rather than that of literary criticism. By comparison with various cult practices, poetry, and customs, the stone kraters and amphoras, the stone looms, and the bees are thus found to be appropriate "symbols" for the soul-Naiads and their cult (sections 13-19). Porphyry then turns his attention to the final lines of the passage, describing the two openings of the cave. The necessity of again citing part of the passage so that we may begin with a clear impression of exactly what Homer says reminds Porphyry of the problem of intention, which he had previously swept under the carpet. His only resolution, however, is to restate his assertion that the same structure of meaning is to be found both in the symbolism of religious cult and in the words of the poets: "We must now explore either the intention
of those who established the cult in the cave, if the poet is repeating historical fact, or his own riddle
, if the description is his own fabrication."[128] Again Porphyry turns to Numenius and Cronius and evokes the identification, already discussed, of the gates with Cancer and Capricorn, and the "people of dreams" of Odyssey 24.12 with the Milky Way (sections 21-29). The density of comparative material throughout this passage is exceptionally great and both method and actual content owe a great deal to Numenius. Even beyond the astrological structure superimposed on the Homeric lines, Porphyry explores the specific appropriateness of a double cave to the physical universe, claiming that duality in all its manifestations corresponds to "otherness"
, which is the source of the natural world. He does not actually mention the Platonic-Pythagorean dyad here, but the list of polar opposites characteristic of the universe is a clear evocation of the Pythagorean columns of opposites (sections 29-31).[129] The recital is arbitrarily cut short by the assertion that it has been sufficiently demonstrated that the two mouths of the cave are an image of the fundamental duality of the universe, and that the entire meaning of Homer's description of the cave has been plumbed. [128] [129] Cf. Geoffrey Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers , pp. 236-42. The same pattern of thought is common to Syrianus and Proclus (see ch. 5E below). ― 129 ― The final section of the essay is the most interesting. Porphyry's discussion, though somewhat unbalanced, has been linear, proceeding methodically through the passage to the end. He has, however, kept something in reserve, the first verse, which he had passed over in silence: At the head of the harbor is a slender-leaved olive.
This element in Homer's description is not part of the supposed dedication and cannot be referred to the wisdom of those who dedicated the cave. Again, Porphyry remains close to Homer's words. The "head" of the harbor was chosen for the olive tree, the symbol of Athena, who was born from the head of Zeus. The tree now emerges as the focus of the entire allegorical landscape. Given that the description of the cave itself is an allegory—whether Homeric or simply transmitted by Homer—representing the physical universe, the olive tree at the head of the harbor next to the cave itself represents divine purpose or wisdom
that informs the universe and yet is something separate from it. This symbolic statement belongs to Homer, the
, not to the hypothetical founders of the actual cult. A recital of symbolic qualities inherent in the olive follows, closing the ingeniously rearranged sequential discussion of the elements of the description (section 33). The final three sections explore the broader myth that contains this allegorical landscape and pose the problem of the passage's relationship to its context. In view of the tendency of the surviving interpretive literature from antiquity to approach a given passage or problem with blinders and to treat it in utter isolation,[130] this in itself is striking evidence of Porphyry's perspective on his task. There is no longer any question of attributing to anyone but Homer the "wisdom" couched in the broader lines of the story. Porphyry's paraphrase of the episode of the hiding of the goods in the cave and the subsequent conversation between Odysseus and Athena (Od . 13.361-440) ignores the typically narrative-dramatic nature of Homer's exposition and transforms the whole passage into a didactic statement about the nature of man's spiritual progress, a statement that has the force of a command: [130] ― 130 ― Homer says that all outward possessions must be deposited in this cave and that one must be stripped naked and take on the persona of a beggar and, having withered the body away and cast aside all that is superficial and turned away from the senses, take counsel with Athena, sitting with her beneath the roots of the olive, how he might cut away all the destructive passions of his soul.[131] This is not, of course, what Homer says. It is what Homer describes, distilled into a moral imperative and fitted to a model of the universe and the nature of man that is not what we are accustomed to think of as Homeric. The interpretation is not original with Porphyry and the tradition into which it fits is identified as that of Numenius and his circle (section 34). This is not to say that Numenius articulated the whole moral allegory Porphyry has just sketched out, but rather that he explained its central symbol: Odysseus as the symbol of man escaping the physical universe (the sea) to return, as Tiresias expressed it in his prophecy, to that place where there is not even any memory of the physical universe. The passage quoted above may well represent Porphyry's own reading; Numenius is introduced primarily to testify to the tradition of the interpretation of Odysseus's journey as a spiritual one. The source of the second moral interpretation is less problematical: Porphyry presents it as explicitly his own. It complements the first and shares the metaphysical preconceptions that underlie it. The key—in characteristically Porphyrian scholarly manner—is provided by the statement (Od . 13.96) that the harbor where Odysseus was deposited belongs to Phorcys. This sea divinity, Porphyry reminds us, was the father of Thoosa, who in turn was the mother of the cyclops Polyphemus. Why does Homer bring this up here? He does so lest we forget Odysseus's original crime against "the gods of the sea and of matter" (
, More interesting than this claim that Odysseus's guilt is the thread that draws this part of the story into line with the tale of his wanderings is the interpretation of the Polyphemus episode that emerges here: "It was not in the nature of things for Odysseus simply to cast off this life of [131] ― 131 ― the senses by blinding it—an attempt to put an end to it abruptly."[132] The bungling, dimwitted, sensual giant of book 9, is, then, a projection into myth of the life of the senses—specifically of Odysseus's own life in this physical universe. The blinding of Polyphemus is a metaphor for suicide, an alternative denied the pilgrim by the gods that preside over this world. One cannot leave so easily. The life of the senses must be transcended not by violence but by contemplation. The path of violence is blocked and merely involves the pilgrim in an even more arduous ordeal of expiation in order to reach his "home." What is fascinating here is the transformation of an element of the myth entirely external to Odysseus into a projection of an aspect of his own spiritual life. The cyclops becomes a part of Odysseus—a part he wants desperately to escape—but his ineptitude in handling his escape at that early point in his career involves him in an arduous spiritual journey. One cannot help thinking at this point of Porphyry's own intended suicide, which Plotinus was instrumental in preventing (Vit. Plot . 11). It seems highly probable that this particular internalization—the reading of the cyclops episode as a failed suicide—is one that had a very personal meaning for Porphyry. If there is an element of the essay that we may realistically think might be original and represent his own reading of the poem, this must be it.[133] The conclusion of Porphyry's essay extends this principle of internalization of the action.[134] Porphyry describes the experience of Odysseus traveling off to the land where oars are unknown: he will travel "until he has become entirely free of the sea and stripped away his very experience of the sea and of matter, so that he thinks that an oar is a winnowing fan in his utter ignorance of the business of seafaring."[135] It is Odysseus's own ignorance that counts for Porphyry, and the details of Tiresias's [132] [133] See my annotated translation of the essay (Porphyry on the Cave of the Nymphs ), n. 28 (p. 42), and appendix, where Plotinus's brief essay on suicide (Enn . 1.9) is compared with the present passage. [134][135] ― 132 ― prophecy yield to the thrust of the interpreter's construction of the meaning of the passage. With an emphasis that may echo Plotinus on the forgetfulness of the higher soul once it has been reabsorbed in the contemplation of higher reality,[136] Porphyry insists that here again the myth has expressed in terms of a dramatized, fragmented development what is, in fact, a stage in the inner life of the soul. The final paragraph defends these concluding general interpretations and insists that they are not "fanciful," though at the same time it implies contempt for another class of interpretations that is viewed as mere display of wit and ingenuity. The interpretations Porphyry has offered are justified by three factors: the wisdom of the ancients, the perfection of Homer, and the claim that "it is impossible that he should have successfully created the entire basis of the story without shaping that creation after some sort of truth."[137] This claim balances the ideas (presumably borrowed from Cronius) in the early paragraphs. It is simply not plausible that a successful poetic work could be produced by sheer "poetic license." The alternative that Porphyry seems to be offering is that Homer based his poems not on a physical or a historical reality but rather on transcendent realities—"truths" that govern the nature of his creation and its structure of meaning in ways that are far from obvious. The unlikely coincidence of literary scholarship and Platonism that produced the essay on the cave of the nymphs has preserved a unique example of Neoplatonic attention to the meaning of a text rather than of a myth. Porphyry's internalization of the elements of the Odyssey story builds on a preexisting model of the meaning of that story but treats the relationship between text and meaning in a new way, or one not previously attested. That the Odyssey was for Plotinus and his circle already a poem that, in subtly manipulated allegories, recounted a spiritual journey through a Platonized universe emerges in Porphyry's "Life of Plotinus" as well, in the oracle on the philosopher given to his disciple Amelius shortly after his death. It is no surprise that the hexameter oracle should contain echoes of Homeric lines.[138] One passage within the oracle, however, is [136] Plot. Enn . 4.3.27. [137] [138] Henry and Schwyzer in their index fontium list nine verses containing Homeric material, but by using broader criteria the list could be lengthened substantially. ― 133 ― among the most convincing pieces of evidence demonstrating that by the late third century, the world of the Iliad and Odyssey had become a source of readily comprehensible metaphors for the progress of the soul. That is, the interpretation according to "secondary meanings" that made of Homer a seer and of his poems a spiritual allegory, current for centuries, had so completely entered the vocabulary of Greek culture—at least in Platonist circles—that no explanation was needed. The Homeric language and situations had entirely absorbed their new weight of meaning. The oracle addresses Plotinus's soul:
—once a man, but now approaching
! The bond of human necessity
[139] The metaphor is further extended and elaborated. It would have been superfluous to mention Odysseus by name, but the Odyssey to which the passage makes oblique reference was, in fact, an allegorical poem. The allegories it contained were placed in it not by the poets of the tradition that produced it but by a vigorous and obtrusive interpretive tradition that had corrected their oversight, an interpretive tradition that was as much a part of Platonism in late antiquity as the poems themselves.[140] [139] See Henry and Schwyzer's editio maior of Plotinus, vol. 1, p. 32, lines 23-38. [140] Many examples of the same image in Christian Platonism could be cited. See for instance the Eastern baptismal liturgy quoted by Hugo Rahner, "Das christliche Mysterium und die heidnischen Mysterien," p. 446: "Im dunklen Tale der Erde fährst du dahin wie auf einem Meer." Rahner draws the analogy to the Odysseus story without attempting to reconstruct the process of transmission to the Christian context. ― 134 ― Date: 2015-12-17; view: 823
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