When the imagery of the metaphor is sustained for a long time, the nature of the style assuredly becomes changed. Consequently the Greeks call this sort of thing allegory.... But he is nearer the truth who calls all of these metaphors.[304]
From Cicero on, allegory has a long history as a rhetorical figure--a trope.[305] St. Augustine recommends that students of the scriptures study the rhetorical figures so that they may be able to interpret the tropes in the Bible, such as allegory.[306]
The result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered theologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized. Fortunate are the poets when they are not believed. "How much better," exclaims St. Augustine, "are these fables of the poets" than the false religious notions of the Manichees. "But Medea flying, although I chanted sometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung, I believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed."[307] For it is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little regard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability."[310]
Thus the general consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry has inescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists, especially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose literal significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical interpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number, however, of Greeks and Romans in the classical period believed that poetry exerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral maxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be induced to follow.
In all these respects the classical view of poetic has much in common with classical rhetoric. Allegory has been shown to have had a long history as an extended metaphor--a rhetorical figure. Maxims are considered fully by Aristotle as aids to persuasion in rhetoric.[311] The exemplum is obviously a stock means of rhetoric.