pointed out by Plato, who showed that while this theory will no
doubt explain many of the current legends, yet, if it is to be
appealed to at all, it must be as a universal principle; a position
he is by no means prepared to admit.

Like many other great principles it suffered from its disciples,
and furnished its own refutation when the web of Penelope was
analysed into a metaphor of the rules of formal logic, the warp
representing the premises, and the woof the conclusion.

Rejecting, then, the allegorical interpretation of the sacred
writings as an essentially dangerous method, proving either too
much or too little, Plato himself returns to the earlier mode of
attack, and re-writes history with a didactic purpose, laying down
certain ethical canons of historical criticism. God is good; God
is just; God is true; God is without the common passions of men.
These are the tests to which we are to bring the stories of the
Greek religion.

'God predestines no men to ruin, nor sends destruction on innocent
cities; He never walks the earth in strange disguise, nor has to
mourn for the death of any well-beloved son. Away with the tears
for Sarpedon, the lying dream sent to Agamemnon, and the story of
the broken covenant!' (Plato, REPUBLIC, Book ii. 380; iii. 388,
391.)

Similar ethical canons are applied to the accounts of the heroes of
the days of old, and by the same A PRIORI principles Achilles is
rescued from the charges of avarice and insolence in a passage
which may be recited as the earliest instance of that 'whitewashing