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
On sacred pillars and on lofty column hang."
Apollo, interpreted mystically by "privation of many," [2108] means the one God. Well, then, that fire like a pillar, and the fire in the desert, is the symbol of the holy light which passed through from earth and returned again to heaven, by the wood [of the cross], by which also the gift of intellectual vision was bestowed on us.
Clement of Alexandria in Print
