The myths that follow are meant to continue this list of subjects, only
with somewhat less blunt obviousness. They suggested to Varus the usual
Epicurean theories of perception, imagination, passion, and mental
aberrations, subjects that Siro must have discussed in some such way as
Lucretius treated them in his third and fourth books of the _De Rerum
Natura_.

It is, of course, not to be supposed that Siro had lectured upon
mythology as such. But the Epicurean teachers, despite their scorn
for legends, employed them for pedagogical purposes in several ways.
Lucretius, for instance, uses them sometimes for their picturesqueness,
as in the _prooemium_ and again in the allegory of the seasons (V. 732).
He also employs them in a Euhemeristic fashion, explaining them as
popular allegories of actual human experiences, citing the myths of
Tantalus and Sisyphus, for example, as expressions of the ever-present
dread of punishment for crimes. Indeed Vergil himself in the _Aetna_--if
it be his--somewhat naïvely introduced the battle of the giants for its
picturesque interest. It is only after he had enjoyed telling the story
in full that he checked himself with the blunt remark:

(1. 74) Haec est mendosae vulgata licentia famae.

Lucretius is little less amusing in his rejection of the Cybele myth,
after a lovely passage of forty lines (II, 600) devoted to it.

Vergil was, therefore, on familiar ground when he tried to remind his
schoolmate of Siro's philosophical themes by designating each of them by
means of an appropriate myth. Perhaps we, who unlike Varus have not heard
the original lectures, may not be able in every case to discover the
theme from the myth, but the poet has at least set us out on the right