“A pillar to the Thebans is joy-inspiring Bacchus,”
from the history of the Hebrews. Also Euripides says, in Antiope,
“In the chambers within, the herdsman,
With chaplet of ivy, pillar of the Evœan god.”
The pillar indicates that God cannot be portrayed. The pillar of light, too, in addition to its pointing out that God cannot be represented, shows also the stability and the permanent duration of the Deity, and His unchangeable and inexpressible light. Before, then, the invention of the forms of images, the ancients erected pillars, and reverenced them as statues of the Deity. Accordingly, he who composed the Phoronis writes,
“Callithoe, key-bearer of the Olympian queen:
Argive Hera, who first with fillets and with fringes
The queen’s tall column all around adorned.”
Further, the author of Europia relates that the statue of Apollo at Delphi was a pillar in these words:
“That to the god first-fruits and tithes we may