436 HISTORY OF GREECE provided only they be plausible and in harmony will: tl precon- ceptions of the auditors. The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by seve- ral learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communi- cating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge under the veil of symbols. At a time (we are told) when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers : the next step was to pass to symbolical language and expressions for a plain and literal exposition, even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as not corresponding with any mental demand. In such allegoriz ing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines respect- ing God, nature, and humanity a refined monotheism and a theological philosophy and to this purpose the earliest mythes were turned. But another class of mythes, more popular and more captivating, grew up under the hands of the poets mythes purely epical, and descriptive of real or supposed past events. The allegorical mythes, being taken up by the poets, insensibly became confounded in the same category with the purely narra- tive mythes the matter symbolized was no longer thought of, while the symbolizing words came to be construed in their own literal meaning and the basis of the early allegory, thus lost among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by hereditary families of presiding priests. In the Orphic and Bac- chic sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, was thus treasured up the secret doctrine of the old theological and philosophical mythes, which had once constituted the primitive legendary stock of Greece, in the hands of the original priest- hood and in ages anterior to Homer. Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation, were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, thu ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing the destina- tion of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punish-
