of Circe he overcomes, penetrates into the secrets of Hades, learns from the Sirens the history of all times, saves himself from the Charybdis of profligacy and the Scylla of shamelessness, and, in abstaining from the oxen of the sun, overcomes sensuous desires. Such explanations may suffice to show how the whole burden of the myths was resolved into allegory by the Stoics, how little they were conscious of foisting in foreign elements, and how they degraded to mere symbols of philosophical ideas those very heroes on whose real existence they continually insisted. [C. Prophetic powers.] The Stoic theology has engaged a good deal of our attention, not only because it is instructive to compare their views, in general and in detail, with similar views advanced nowadays, but also because it forms a very characteristic and important part of their entire system. To us, much of it appears to be a mere worthless trifling; but, to the Stoics, these explanations were solemnly earnest. To them they seemed to be the only means of rescuing the people’s faith, of meeting the severe charges brought against tradition and the works of the poets, on which a Greek had been fed from infancy. [989] Unable to break entirely with these traditions, they still would not sacrifice to them their scientific and moral convictions. Can we, then, wonder that they attempted the impossible, and sought to unite contradictions? or that such an attempt landed them in forced and artificial methods of interpretation? [(1) Divination.]