The Definition of Allegory in the Classical World: Rhetorical Trope or Philosophical Technique?

I don't know what is brought to your mind by the term “allegory”, but its range of meaning can
differ remarkably depending upon who you ask. The relatively specialist nature of the term means
some people may have no definition for it at all; in my own church context, many people I talk to
about my PhD have a relatively clear concept of allegory, but not necessarily one I'd go along with
myself. The term, like so many others, is disputed.

Without diving into the wider discussion about the term in literary theory, I would like to investigate
definitions of the word in my own field – as the term allegory applies to ancient writings. Modern
academics in Classics and New Testament use the term “allegory” to describe a wide range of
practices or ideas. Let me give a flavour of the range of views available. We may briefly note the
traditional Roman Catholic and Orthodox idea of reading the multiple senses of Scripture, including
the allegorical – that is, where, the text has a hidden spiritual meaning intended by God. But not all
scholars have been so trusting. Tate, in the 1920s, remarked that for many classical philosophers
“the process of reading doctrine into the [Greek] myths goes on side by side with the process of
remoulding and extending the myths for one's own purpose”1; he also “suggested that the aim of
Stoic” allegorical reading “was . . . rather to confirm Stoicism itself by applying Homer and Greek
religion to them”2. Essentially, though Tate is willing to grant that ancient Greek philosophers did
sincerely believe that the poets had encoded secrets into their texts via allegory, this was essentially
a self-deluding and self-serving belief.

Building on that hermeneutic of suspicion, literary theorist Peter Berek suggested in 1978 a
distinction between allegory and allegoresis – allegory being the writing of encoded information,
allegoresis being the reading and decoding of such information. The two, naturally, could be
entirely separate – a true allegory might go undetected, whilst much allegoresis is entirely misled as
to the spiritual nature of their source3.

The motivation of ancient allegory, then, was often considered suspect by 20th century scholarship.
The technique, too, was delineated and described quite critically – this is what Eichrodt says,
comparing early Christian typology and allegory: “While for typology the historical importance of
the text being interpreted forms the essential presupposition of its use, for allegory on the other
hand it is indifferent, or even offensive, and must be pushed aside in order to liberate the “spiritual”
meaning lying behind it.”4

But by the end of the twentieth century, alternative definitions of allegory arise to challenge the pre-
modern acceptance of allegory and the modern suspicion of it. George Boys-Stones identifies two
types of Stoic allegory – where the reader reconstructs the wisdom of the ancients from the
degradation of mythological poetry, and where they read what they take to be intentionally coded
allegory5. Dirk Obbink, one of the experts in Classics on allegory, see allegory as a relatively value-
neutral method of both writing and reading, sitting alongside etymology, metaphor, or analogy6.
Nathan Macdonald, on the other hand, looks at early Christian interpretive techniques in Hebrews
and concludes that “non-literal modes of interpretation can include what twentieth-century
scholarship sought to distinguish as typological and allegorical modes of reading. Hebrews knows

1 Tate, J. “The Beginnings of Greek Allegory”. The Classical Review 41.6 (December 1927): 214.
2 Most, G.W. “Cornutus and Stoic Allegoresis: A Preliminary Report”. Aufstieg und Niedergang derRömischen Welt
Band II.36.3 edited by Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989: 2019.
3 Berek, P. “Interpretation, Allegory, and Allegoresis”. College English 40.2 (October 1978): pp117-132.
4 Eichrodt apud Sowers, S.G. Hermeneutics of Philo and Hebrews. Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1965: 90.
5 Boys-Stones, G.R. “The Stoics' Two Types of Allegory”. Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical
Tradition edited by G.R. Boys-Stones. Oxford: OUP, 2003: pp189-215.
6 Obbink, D. “Early Greek Allegory”. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory edited by Rita
Copeland and Peter T. Struck. Cambridge: CUP, 2010: pp18f.
nothing of this distinction and is happy to move between them”7

But even these more generous and holistic definitions do not command universal assent in a post-
modern academy. David Dawson, one of the more notable New Testament scholars of our topic,
sees allegory in the context of postmodern political expression – allegory is a method that the reader
employs to subvert traditional meanings. For Dawson, the literal meaning is the culturally expected
meaning, whereas “An 'allegorical reading' obtains its identity precisely by its contrast with this
customary or expected meaning.”8 Andrew Laird agrees, saying that “The fact of the matter is that
hidden understandings are really constructed from the sense of the letter by readers – or listeners –
and not implanted by authors – or speakers.”9 Laird pushes the point further, though, adding that
“Allegory is thus an essential feature of any text – but a feature which, like the 'message' in the
semiotical sense, is actualized in various ways according to the nature of the relation between text
and reader, or between speaker and addressee.”10 Which means, of course, that what is happening in
this presentation ABOUT allegory IS allegory – we are simply a collection of isolated minds
imagining that someone is talking to us about ancient literary techniques.

What is remarkable – to me at least – is how little attention is paid by the writers I have mentioned
to the actual Greek source of the word we're discussing – allēgoria. Of course they are all aware of
the background – indeed, Obbink himself points out that the words used by Classical Greek
philosophers for “allegory” were in fact huponoia, sumbolon, and ainigma. These scholars have
obviously made a conscious decision to use the English term allegory as a catch-all – sometimes
openly rejecting classical definitions11 and then sought to define it. Often they seek to do this – see,
for instance, Obbink or Laird – by judging which texts to analyse by utilising their own definition.
You can see, perhaps, the potential futility in this method.

I am instead going to turn to the most disadvantaged and dismissed of all groups – the dead. The
classical writers themselves, I believe, have key insights into how we might use the term “allegory”
most usefully – and like Abel, their blood, or rather their ink, still speaks. Though of course we may
choose to refine or redefine the word “allegory”, turning to its inventors for guidance seems at the
very least respectful, and potentially very helpful.

As I have already mentioned, the term allēgoria arrived relatively late on the scene. Its first
appearance in what remains of classical literature is perhaps as late as the first half of the first
century BC. Indeed, even after its first appearance in the record, not every author uses it.

The word allegory typically is used in the modern world to signify some sort of semi-spiritual
writing or reading technique. Its first appearance as a word is not that by any means. The first
authors to use the term use it strictly in the context of discussing rhetorical skill. Our earliest two
mentions of the word come in the work of the Epicurean Philodemus, in his work De Rhetorica;
and the more Academically inclined anonymous author of the Rhetorica Ad Herennium. Philodemus
is discussing how the Sophists attempt to teach rhetoric, and in a rather scathing tone upbraids them
for distracting young men from philosophy by defining different rhetorical figures without ever
teaching them how to use such figures. In this, his examples are metaphor and allegory12. Whatever
we take those to be, to Philodemus they are perfectly legitimate rhetorical tropes. The Ad
7 McDonald, N. “Introduction”. Hebrews and Christian Theology edited by R. Bauckham et al. Grand Rapids,
Mi.: Eerdmans, 2009: 9.
8 Dawson, J.D. Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria. Berkeley, Ca.: University of
California Press, 1992: 8.
9 Laird, A. “Figures of Allegory from Homer to Latin Epic”. Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition
edited by G.R. Boys-Stones. Oxford: OUP, 2003: 174f.
10 Ibid. 175.
11 See Boys-Stones or Laird.
12 Philodemus. De Rhetorica., I.164; I.171,2; I.181.
Herennium offers more detail as to what allegory is; it is drawing from a Greek original, and it uses
the Latin word permutatio, which tends to translate the Greek allēgoria. Our author offers three
types of permutatio – employing several metaphors from the same domain together; employing a
comparison in order to magnify or lessen an object; and employing a mocking comparison13. Our
next source, Cicero, emphasizes the first of those definitions – whilst talking about metaphor, he
describes a particular sub-type of metaphor called by the Greeks allēgoria. He says: “When many
metaphors succeed one another uninterruptedly the sort of oration becomes entirely changed”14.

This is not, in rhetorical terms, entirely a bad thing to Cicero. And we can see in the ad Herennium
and in Cicero the relation to our more philosophical or theological concept of allegory; when a text
or speech consists of an extended metaphor, with many different terms representing – or shall we
say standing in – for other terms. What else is the Parable of the Sower but an extended simile,
where each item represents something else? This sort of allegory therefore becomes a sort of code;
and indeed Cicero uses this concept in another use of the word. Writing to Atticus during his
extended clashes with Clodius, Cicero addresses the concerns of letters being intercepted by saying
that, in future, he will clothe talk of politics “in allegory” - he uses the Greek term allēgoriais15.
Atticus would, presumably, know how to decode this; Clodius' partisans would not.

Despite this repeated rhetorical use of the term allēgoria, Cicero does not use the term in relation to
where we might most readily expect it – philosophy. In his On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero has
one character criticize the Stoic manner of finding philosophical information in the myths. The first
Stoics – Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus – are criticized for seeking “to provide an explanation of
the legendary stories, and to set forth the reasons for the form of each proper name”16. When one
looks at the fragments of those three, this sounds a lot like the first type of “allegory” described by
George Boys-Stones – reconstructing ancient wisdom via reading the (potentially unreliable) poets.

Similarly, Stoic philosophers contemporary with Cicero also seem to avoid the word – to a degree
that one might almost suspect it to be intentional. Allēgoria was, by Cicero's time, a newish but
relatively respectable word in the technical vocabulary of the Greeks. But the geographer Strabo
and the slightly later theologian Cornutus – both of whom believe ancient wisdom can be
reconstructed from myths, and of whom Strabo particularly respects Homer – avoid the term
entirely, preferring terms such as ainigma – rather obviously meaning, enigma – or sumbolon –
symbol.17 Both seem to grant the possibility that the ancients hid their knowledge in the mythical
forms for some reason. Strabo puts it thus: “And theology as a whole must examine early opinions
and myths, since the ancients expressed enigmatically the physical notions which they entertained
concerning the facts and always added the mythical element to their accounts”18

The definition of allegory was solidified and developed in the first century AD, though some
Graeco-Roman philosophers – such as Cornutus – still eschewed it. Still at this point the majority of
technical definition of the term is done by rhetoricians. Longinus admits that at face value certain
scandalous myths seem to require allegory; his own definition of the term is clear where he
criticizes Plato for falling into “inflated allegory”, with the example given from Plato's Laws being
an extended and slightly forced metaphor19. Longinus essentially agrees with the rhetoricians of the

13 Rhetorica ad Herennium, IV.34,46. See also Silva Rhetoricae. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/P/permutatio.htm.

Brigham Young University: accessed 30/11/2014.
14 Cicero. Orator ad M. Brutum, 94. Quintillian in Institutes 8.6.44 follows this definition.
15 Cicero. Epistulae ad Atticum, 2.20.3.
16 Cicero. De Natura Deorum, III.24.
17 Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium. Strabo. Geographica, I.2.3, X.3.23.
18 Strabo. Geographica, X.3.23.
19 Longinus. On The Sublime, XXXIII.7. Plato. Laws, 773c: 'For it is not readily observed,' he says, 'that a city
ought to be mixed like a bowl, in which the mad wine seethes when it has been poured in, though when chastened by
another god who is sober, falling thus into noble company, it makes a good and temperate drink'.
previous century. Demetrius, also likely writing in the 1st century AD, shows some movement
forward here – for him, allegory is something slightly more complicated than simply a set of related
metaphors. He says:
“99. There is a kind of impressiveness also in allegorical language. This is particularly true of such
menaces as that of Dionysius: 'their cicadas shall chirp from the ground' (see note on Proverbs).
100. If Dionysius had expressed his meaning directly, saying that he would ravage the Locrian
land, he would have shown at once more irritation and less dignity. In the phrase actually used the
speaker has shrouded his words, as it were, in allegory. Any darkly-hinting expression is more
terror-striking, and its import is variously conjectured by different hearers. On the other hand,
things that are clear and plain are apt to be despised, just like men when stripped of their garments.
101. Hence the Mysteries are revealed in an allegorical form in order to inspire such shuddering
and awe as are associated with darkness and night. Allegory also is not unlike darkness and night.”
102. Here again excess must be avoided, lest language become a riddle in our hands, as in the
description of the surgeon's cupping-glass:
A man I beheld who with fire had welded brass to a man's flesh
(Cleobulina, fragm. 1. Bergk).
The Lacedaemonians conveyed many of their threats by means of allegory, as in the message
'Dionysius at Corinth' addressed to Philip, and in many similar expressions.”20
Demetrius too worries about an excess of allegory, but offers an almost philosophical reason for
why allegory is particularly appropriate – that it veils what ought to be impressive, giving you
glimpses of it rather than exposing it to an unsympathetic gaze. This seems to develop one strand of
the thought of those like Strabo who suspected that the ancients hid truth in myths – and now whilst
using the term allegory. The suggestive rhetorical trope of allegory was utilized to honour the
mysteries and gods, and to hide them from the unworthy. This is the earliest time in a handbook of
rhetoric that the trope of allegory is linked to the sort of spiritual writing and reading that earlier
Greeks, as far back as Plato’s time at least, had called huponoia, ainigma, sumbolon, or hieros
logos.

The first uses of the term allēgoria we see used directly by philosophers or theologians are roughly
contemporary with Longinus and Demetrius in the 1st century AD. One, Philo the Jew of
Alexandria, I won’t address here, though he would be an interesting light on the subject, too. The
second, Heraclitus of Alexandria, was a Hellenistic philosopher, predominantly of Stoic persuasion.
His book of Homeric Problems serves as an allegorical analysis and defence of Homer. Heraclitus
states the problem with Homer thus: “If he meant nothing allegorically, he was impious through and
through, and sacrilegious fables, loaded with blasphemous folly, run riot through both epics”21. He
helpfully defines what he means by the word “allegorically” a few paragraphs later. He offers a
“little technical account of allegory” – “The word itself, which is formed in a way expressive of
truth, reveals its own significance” – which is a typically Stoic way of looking at the nature of
language, which most fittingly describes things by means of even syllabic sounds which are fitting
the subject – “For the trope which says [agreuOn] one thing but signifies something other [allos]
than what it says receives the name ‘allegory’ precisely from this”22. He proceeds to give two
examples of extended metaphor in Classical Greek poetry. Heraclitus does not offer a specialist
philosophical definition of the word allegory when describing his project. He simply takes up the
standard rhetorical definition, of an extended metaphor which offers veiled meaning. However, like
Demetrius, he applies the term to holy things – he speaks of Homer’s epics as being portal to “the
secrets caverns of his wisdom”23, and repeatedly speaks of Homer as a priest24. For Heraclitus – and
for Philo, who I have glided over – the term allēgoria has largely replaced the old terms. By the
first century, philosophers and theologians had chosen a technical term from rhetoric to describe
20 Demetrius. On Style, 99-102.
21 Heraclitus. Homeric Allegories, 1.
22 Ibid., 6.
23 Ibid., 4.
24 REFERENCE
what was happening in sacred texts. In the second century AD, indeed, Plutarch describes this very
change – that was called huponoia is now called allēgoria25. The rhetorical term, I propose,
perfectly sums up what these interpreters believed they were doing: just as Cicero planned to
allegorically encode political news, so had the ancient poets; this was because the holy things they
spoke of were too sacred to be exposed to plain view. Only the initiated were fit to decode them.
Obviously this functions as an authority claim for the allegorical reader to some degree, but to Philo
and Heraclitus this sort of “initiation” is really available to all willing to learn it, and so it functions
as a soft authority claim. Even accepting that, I would not assume the insincerity of the application
of the rhetorical term; I would hope I am quite sincere, for instance, in my views on the authority of
the Christian Bible, whilst still recognizing that that view functions as an authority claim.

And now a brief footnote to the story of this shift: Paul, in Galatians 4.24, tells us that the story of
Hagar and Sarah is to be interpreted “allegorically” as truly being about the two covenants, Old and
New. I could really talk about the interpretation of this passage at length, but suffice to say that the
term is disputed – the NIV goes so far as to translate it as “figuratively” rather than “allegorically”.
The great allegory/typology debate has raged heatedly on this battleground. Notwithstanding the
fact Paul plainly “allegorizes” elsewhere26, let us consider his use of the term here in a rhetorical
context. What if all Paul is claiming is this: in the Biblical tale of Hagar and Sarah, God was
encoding the prophetic truth, apparent to those first Christians, that the Jewish Covenant would at
the very least be changed by Christ’s coming – and, indeed, to Paul, entirely replaced? Few would
deny that Paul might have seen the text of the Bible as a rhetorical accomplishment of God. Why
shouldn’t God use a few rhetorical figures as part of that?

Hearing from the ancients what they meant by the word allēgoria seems to me to, at the very least,
decisively solve the allegory/typology debate as it comes to Paul’s meaning here. We also see that
no ancient meant by the word what Boys-Stones offers as one type of allegory – the reconstruction
of ancient truth from potentially unreliable poets. On the other hand, we do not see an entirely
uniform agreement about the proper use of the technique – especially if we count in some other
authors from slightly later.

Bibliography
Anonymous. Rhetorica ad Herennium.
Cicero.
De Natura Deorum.
Epistulae ad Atticum.
Orator ad M. Brutum.
Demetrius. On Style
Heraclitus of Alexandria. Homeric Problems.
Longinus. On The Sublime.
Paul of Tarsus. Galatians.
Philodemus. De Rhetorica.
Plato. Laws.
Plutarch. De Audiendis Poetis.
Quintillian. Institutes.

Berek, P. “Interpretation, Allegory, and Allegoresis”. College English 40.2 (October 1978): pp117
132.
Boys-Stones, G.R. (ed.). Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition. Oxford: OUP, 2003
Boys-Stones, G.R. “The Stoics' Two Types of Allegory”. Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical
Tradition edited by G.R. Boys-Stones. Oxford: OUP, 2003: pp189-215.

25 Plutarch, De Audiendis Poetis, 4.19e.

26 E.g. particularly in 1 Corinthians 9.
Dawson, J.D. Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria. Berkeley, Ca.:
University of California Press, 1992.
Laird, A. “Figures of Allegory from Homer to Latin Epic”. Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical
Tradition edited by G.R. Boys-Stones. Oxford: OUP, 2003: pp151-175.
McDonald, N. “Introduction”. Hebrews and Christian Theology edited by R. Bauckham et al.
Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2009: pp1-12.
Most, G.W. “Cornutus and Stoic Allegoresis: A Preliminary Report”. Aufstieg und Niedergang der
Römischen Welt Band II.36.3 edited by Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989:
pp2014-2065.
Obbink, D. “Early Greek Allegory”. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory edited by Rita
Copeland and Peter T. Struck. Cambridge: CUP, 2010: pp15-25.
Silva Rhetoricae. “Permutatio”. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/P/permutatio.htm. Brigham Young
University: accessed 30/11/2014.
Sowers, S.G. Hermeneutics of Philo and Hebrews. Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1965.
Tate, J. “The Beginnings of Greek Allegory”. The Classical Review 41.6 (December 1927): pp214-
215.