Miscellanies 5.4.20

From this, prophecies and oracles are spoken in riddles, and the mysteries are not shown freely to all who come, but with certain purifications and preliminary instructions. “For the Muse was not yet greedy for gain nor a hireling; nor were the sweet, honey-voiced, soft-sounding songs sold by Terpsichore, their faces silvered.” For example, those educated among the Egyptians first of all learn the method of Egyptian letters called epistolographic; second, the hieratic, which the sacred scribes use; and last and final, the hieroglyphic, of which one kind is literal, by the first letters, and another symbolic. Of the symbolic, one kind is literal by imitation, another is written as it were figuratively, and another is plainly allegorized by certain riddles. When they wish to write “sun,” at any rate, they make a circle, and for “moon” a crescent shape, according to the literal form. Figuratively, they engrave by transferring and transposing according to affinity, sometimes altering, sometimes transforming in many ways.