34. But, agreeing with you
that in all these stories stags are spoken of instead of Iphigenias,
yet, how are you sure, when you either explain or unfold these
allegories, that you give the same explanations or have the same ideas
which were entertained by the writers themselves in the silence of
their thoughts, but expressed by words not adapted4494
to what was meant, but to something
else? You say that the falling of rain into the
bosom of the
earth was spoken of as the union of
Jupiter and Ceres; another may both
devise with greater
subtlety, and conjecture with some probability,
something else; a third, a fourth may
do the same; and as the
characteristics of the minds of the thinkers show themselves, so each
thing may be explained in an infinite number of ways. For since
all that
allegory, as it is called, is taken from narratives expressly
made obscure,
4495
| 4495
Lit., “from shut-up things.” |
and has no
certain limit within which the meaning of the story,
4496
as it is called, should be firmly
fixed and unchangeable, it is open to every one to put the meaning into
it which he pleases, and to assert that that has been adopted
4497
to which his
thoughts and surmises
4498
| 4498
Lit., “his suspicion and conjectural (perhaps
“probable”) inference.” |
led him. But this being the
case, how can you obtain certainty from what is
doubtful, and attach
one sense only to an expression which you see to be explained in
innumerable different ways?
4499
| 4499
Lit., “to be deduced with variety of expositions through
numberless ways.” |
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
