Didymus the Blind and Porphyry of Tyre on Allegorical Hermeneutics: Achilles and Hector, Christ and the Devil

During the first few class periods each semester in my ancient and medieval survey class, we read Stanley Lombardo’s abridged version of the Iliad.¹ Invariably, my students have no trouble differentiating what they see as the character flaws of Achilles from the virtues of Hector. The Iliad invites such a comparison: Achilles appears in the first line of the epic and Hector in the last line while the narrative action of the epic careens toward a confrontation between the two. To be fair to my students, Homer certainly hints at their reading of the two characters. The rage of Achilles brings death and destruction on the Achaeans, and his arrogance (ἀγήνωρ), labeled as such by Diomedes at the end of Book IX , is so controlling that he is quick to see hubris (ὕβρις) in others, notably in Agamemnon, without seeing it in himself.² This lack of insight only exacerbates the misery for the Achaeans as he refuses to rejoin the war against Troy. Meanwhile, Homer depicts Hector, the son of King Priam of Troy and military leader of the city, as loving his wife and son (Iliad VI) and navigating an impossible and dangerous situation due to the folly of his brother Paris. He fights with his men to protect Troy while Achilles sulks in the Achaean camp.

Granted, reading an abridged version means the students do not have a complete picture of either Achilles or Hector. They never encounter, for example, Achilles the healer in Book XI. Similarly, while my students are always ready to forgive Hector for running from Achilles in their final confrontation in Book XXII – who wouldn’t run from Achilles? – they do not encounter the Hector of Book XVII who runs from very human Achaeans and only recovers his nerve when shamed by his allies. I am not sure this would sway my students. Even the Achilles of Book XXIII, which they do read, who has compassion on Priam and returns Hector’s body to his family does not change their minds. In short, my students would much prefer to have Hector as a friend or roommate than Achilles.

It is beyond the nature of this survey class to explore this fully, but my students would be surprised to learn that ancient commenters on the Iliad disagreed on how to plot the relative virtue or vice of Achilles. Plato was perhaps the fiercest critic of Homer’s depiction of Achilles and in the Republic has much to say, through Socrates, about Achilles’ flaws.³ Others were more positive. Indeed, as Katherine King has shown, a long standing tradition among Greek poets and playwrights celebrated Achilles as the model hero, and in this tradition the ugliness of Achilles’ character fades and disappears. The fifth-century lyricist Pindar, in his Odes, presents the noble Achilles as facing off against the “vehement” Hector.⁴ Similarly, Pindar’s near contemporary Sophocles, in the Philoktetes, a piece that features Achilles’ son Neoptolemus choosing the noble virtues of his father over the deceptions of Odysseus, equally celebrates this best version of Achilles.⁵

Even more striking are the allegorical readings of Homer that emerged within the tradition of Neoplatonism, a phenomenon well documented in Robert Lamberton’s Homer the Theologian. Plotinus (c. 205-270), the figure credited with launching this philosophical school, articulated an interpretation of Iliad I.188-205 that suggests how such readings could privilege Achilles. In this scene, Achilles, in his rage at Agamemnon, is about to kill him and only the direct intervention of Athena, who grabs Achilles’ hair, is able to restrain him. Plotinus’s reading of the text focuses on I.199-200: “Awestruck, Achilles turned around, recognizing Pallas Athena at once….”⁶ Plotinus understands from this passage a depiction of the moment when a soul “turns” and recognizes its true nature by contemplating the One or God. Far from highlighting Achilles’ barely restrained murderous anger, Plotinus’ allegorical reading of this passage has rendered Achilles as an exemplar of the soul’s progression through a divine epiphany.⁷

This brings us, finally, to the two figures and issue mentioned in the title: the Christian scholar Didymus the Blind, the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre, and the appropriate scope of allegorical hermeneutics. While Plotinus was using allegory to uncover truths in Homer, some Christian authors had already been deploying this same hermeneutical strategy in their reading of the Jewish Scriptures. Emboldened by Paul’s allegory of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4:21-31, Christian exegetes used allegory to affirm their conviction that these texts were fundamentally Christian texts, an Old Testament now understood in light of a New Testament, which pointed to the mission of Christ and the establishment of the Church.⁸ By the third century, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-253) was writing biblical commentaries in which he regularly deployed allegory to expose a spiritual and Christian reading of Old Testament texts, and his approach would have a profound influence on Christian exegesis in the centuries that followed.⁹ The Christian adoption of allegory brought criticism. Celsus, writing at the end of the second-century, sneered at Christians for attempting to salvage a collection of otherwise barbaric texts through the use of allegory.¹⁰ A century later, Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234-305), a student of Plotinus who published his master’s lectures, picked up where Celsus left off and wrote his own criticisms of Christianity. Both his Philosophy from Oracles and his Against the Christians included polemics against the Bible and the Christian interpretation of it.¹¹ According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Porphyry was well acquainted with Origen’s writings and his biblical scholarship.¹²

Didymus the Blind (c. 313-98) also knew well Origen’s biblical scholarship and was familiar with the reproach Christians faced from figures like Porphyry for using allegory. During his life, Didymus was apparently a prominent figure of the church in Alexandria, an advocate for Trinitarian theology and the Nicene creed during the fourth-century theological debates following Nicea, and a careful student of Origen’s allegorical exegesis. In fact, he was so closely associated with Origen that when the Second Council of Constantinople (553) condemned Origen, the writings of Didymus were equally condemned. Due to a serendipitous discovery during World War II, a collection of papyri near Toura in Egypt has restored several commentaries of Didymus, including parts of his commentaries on Genesis, Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, and Zechariah.¹³ The commentary on Ecclesiastes, which engages the question of allegory, the contest with Porphyry over allegory, and allegories of the Iliad, is what concerns us here.¹⁴

Didymus’ reading of Ecclesiastes 9:10b — “for in Hades, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” — launches him into a discussion of allegory.¹⁵ Because other passages of scripture suggest that there is wisdom and knowledge for those who are in the afterlife, Didymus concludes that “in Hades” here must mean those in a state of spiritual death even before their physical death. This follows his general rule of biblical hermeneutics: “There is nothing that is inspired by the Holy Spirit that does not have a spiritual meaning; for if they are teachings of the Holy Spirit, they must be understood in a spiritual sense.”¹⁶ This being the case, Didymus twice states that we must sometimes “abuse” or “do violence to” (βιαζόμεθα) the literal meaning to reveal the spiritual meaning.¹⁷

In a concluding comment to his interpretation of this verse, Didymus brings up Porphyry and returns us to Achilles and Hector. In his article on this part of the commentary, Phillip Sellew provides an English translation and a learned discussion of its implications.¹⁸ First his translation:

“Now then Porphyry, who wants [to reproach us for doing violence to the literal] meanings by manufacturing figurative references and allegorical meanings, has himself allegorized [someplace in Homer] where Achilles and Hector are mentioned, when he spoke in reference to Christ and the Devil. And the things that we are accustomed to say about the Devil, he says about Hector, while what we say about Christ, he says about Achilles. And he employs this sort of expression: ‘Before the victory of Achilles, Hector used to strut before all his foes, and thought himself more powerful than all. But he did this in order to deceive.’ Here then he finishes with the anagonic interpretation. Often we in fact do violence (βιαζόμεθα) to the historical letter, not to explicate the narrative, but rather to lead our hearer to understanding….”¹⁹

Sellew’s excellent discussion of Porphyry as critic of Christianity and Christian interpretation of scripture is worth reading in its entirety. Here, I will draw attention only to the main argument he makes: rather than viewing Porphyry’s comments as sarcasm, mocking the Christian predilection for allegory, Sellew suggests we see this as a serious allegorical interpretation of Achilles and Hector which Porphyry was proposing as an alternative to the protagonist and antagonist of the Christian story — Christ and the Devil.²⁰ Presumably, Plotinus’s own allegory on Achilles that made him into a model for the soul’s progress to the One suggested this approach. In Sellew’s view, the issue in question involves the proper scope for allegory. For Porphyry and his peers, the barbaric Christian scriptures are illegitimate texts for application of this hermeneutic.²¹ If Christians insist on a grandiose story of good versus evil, then allegorizing the Iliad is a far better and more legitimate exercise than doing the same to the Bible. Porphyry’s position is clear: the allegorized Achilles of the Iliad is far preferable to Christ on that score.

As a final note, it is interesting that Didymus did not apparently find Porphyry’s challenge to the Christian use of allegory either compelling or threatening. Writing a century after Porphyry at a time when Christianity was victorious in the religious competition of Late Antiquity, he cities Porphyry’s criticism almost out of detached amusement. At any rate, he saw no reason to expend any time arguing the point with Porphyry. Allegory had indeed triumphed, but, by the late fourth century, Porphyry’s great fear had been realized: the proper scope of allegory had shifted from Homer the theologian to the Bible.

Needless to say, my students would find the claim that Achilles was a model of deep philosophical and spiritual conversion very strange, and they would certainly find the claim that Achilles and Hector were analogous to Christ and the Devil utterly bizarre. If allegory was triumphant in the pre-modern world, it has certainly fallen on hard times today.

1. The Essential Iliad, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Hackett, 2000). In what follows, all references to the Greek text are from Homeri Opera, eds. Monro and Allen, vols. I and II, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford, 1920); available at http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc1. ↩︎
2. The first word of the Iliad is rage (μῆνιν, acc. of μῆνις) and Homer uses the word to characterize Achilles elsewhere. Achilles on the hubris of Agamemnon: Iliad I.203 and I.2214. Diomedes’ criticism of the arrogance of Achilles: Iliad IX.699 ↩︎
3. Plato, Republic 379d – 391e; and see Angela Hobbs, “The Threat of Achilles,” in Plato and the Hero (Cambridge, 2000), 199-219. ↩︎
4. King, Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer to the Middle Ages (Berkely: University of California Press, 1987), 56-66 ↩︎
5. Ibid., 66-77, ↩︎
6. Greek: θάμβησεν δ᾽ Ἀχιλεύς, μετὰ δ᾽ ἐτράπετ᾽, αὐτίκα δ᾽ ἔγνω Παλλάδ᾽ Ἀθηναίην [http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg001.perseus-grc1] ↩︎
7. Plotinus, Enneads VI.5.7.11-17. See Lamberton, Homer the Theologian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 93-95. ↩︎
8. The key passages is Galatians 4.24, where Paul uses the participle ἀλληγορούμενα from the verb ἀλληγορέω. This is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. According to Eusebius of Caesarea (Ecclesiastical History IV.26), Melito of Sardis (c. 100-80), author of the Peri Pascha, an elaborate typological interpretation of the Exodus account of the Passover, first used the phrase Old Testament. ↩︎
9. The literature on Origen is voluminous. Two classic studies from the 20th century, originally in French and now in English, are worth reading: Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007); and Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016). More recently, see the collection of essays in The Oxford Handbook of Origen, eds. Ronald E. Heine and Karen Jo Torjensen (Oxford, 2022). ↩︎
10. Origen, Contra Celsum IV.38, IV.50-51, VI.29. ↩︎
11. Due to a vigorous effort of Christian emperors, especially Theodosius II (402-450), to destroy them, these texts survive only in fragmentary quotations from Christian authors responding to Porphyry. See Ariane Magny, Porphyry in Fragments: Reception of an Anti-Christian Text in Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2016). ↩︎
12. See Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History VI.19. ↩︎
13. On this discovery, see H. G. Puech, “Les nouveaux écrits d’Origène et de Didyme découverts à Toura,” Revue d’Histoire et de philosophie religieuses 31 (1951), 293-329. Roger Pearse has an abbreviated discussion at his site: https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/tura_papyri.htm ↩︎
14. All references to the commentary are from Didymos der Blinde: Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes (Tura-Papyrus), vol. 5: Zu Eccl. 9.8-10.20, ed. Michael Gronewald, Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen 24 (Bonn: Habelt, 1979). ↩︎
15. Didymos der Blinde, 26. Greek text: ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ποίημα καὶ λογισμὸς καὶ γνῶσις καὶ σοφία
     ἐν ᾅδῃ ὅπου σὺ πορεύῃ ἐκεῖ. ↩︎
16. Didymos der Blinde, 36. My English translation follows Gronewald’s conjectures for the lacunae and his own German translation. Greek text: οὐδέν ἐστιν ὑπὸ ἁγίου πν(εύματο)ϛ [….. ….. ..], ὃ οὐκ ἔχει ἀναγωγήν· εἰ γὰρ πν(εύματο)ϛ ἁγίου μαθήματά ἐστιν ταῦτα, πνευμα(τικῶϛ γνῶ)ναι δεῖ. ↩︎
17. Didymos der Blinde, 36. βιαζόμεθα is a conjecture based on its presence in a later passage to be discussed below. See note 19. ↩︎
18. Philip Sellew, “Achilles or Christ? Porphyry and Didymus in Debate over Allegorical Interpretation,” Harvard Theological Review 82.1 (1989), 79-100 ↩︎
19. Sellew, “Achilles or Christ,” 81-82. ↩︎
20. Ibid., 84, 98-100 ↩︎
21. Ibid., 92-98. ↩︎