61 



Plato, and other Greek philosophers, treated these fables 

 with the utmost contempt, as did Cicero among tlie Romans 

 in his books De Natwa Bcorum. Nay, the Plienician priestJ 

 were at last convinced of the absurdity of their fables when 

 taken in the literal sense, and to excuse them, they pretended 

 they were mere allegorical representations of the operations 

 of nature, for which they were severely censured by San- 

 choniatho ;* and Eusehius asserts, that they were still in Ins 

 time believed in the literal sense in the towns and villages of 

 Phenicia. Plutarch, Porphyry, and the later Platonics 

 alarmed at the progress of Christianity, whose teachers suc- 

 cessfully exposed the absurdity and turpitude of these fables 

 endeavoured also to convert them into allegories, but in vain.' 

 Most of these allegories were as absurd as the fables them- 

 selves; see Eusebius, p. 100 and 108. Lord Bacon explains 

 some of them so happily, that he thought they must have 

 been invented by philosophers : but except that of Pandora 

 and a few others, it is plain they had no reference to morals ; 

 but his ingenuity might extract quidlibet ex quoUbet. It 

 should be remembered that Parnel proved the Rape of the 

 Lock to be a treasonable libel, 



* Euseb. 39. 



