Oedipus
Specifically, this symbol is related to something referred to as Oedipal intercourse. Oedipus is the infamous figure from Greek myth who unwittingly murdered his father and married his mother in an attempt to escape an oracle’s prediction that he would murder his father and marry his mother. In this particular context, the miseries inflicted upon Oedipus is directly charged with the part of his story involving his mother. Early Christians were accused of engaging in all manner of wanton sexuality, including but not limited to sleeping with close blood relatives, and thus Oedipus intended to symbolize the dark view toward early Christians held by the rest of the European world.
Thyestean Feasts
Another charge leveled against Christians by the Romans is engaging in ritualistic Thyestean feasts. It is another mythological allusion, but the precise details are not as important as they are with Oedipus. Suffice to say the symbolism involved here is related to conspiracy theories being passed around by the Romans that because Christians partook of the “body of Christ”, their ritualistic practices involved actual cannibalism.
Euripides
The legendary ancient Greek playwright Euripides is forwarded by the author as an example of questioning the validity of polytheism in favor of the radical idea of just one single supreme being without necessarily advocating atheism. The Christian tenet of monotheism was another point on which the followers of this burgeoning movement were attacked. The attack upon them arrived in the form of a misapprehension—or perhaps better described as a misappropriation—of the definition of atheism as rejecting belief in Roman polytheism.
The Holy Spirit
The third aspect of the trinitarian concept of the Christian deity is forwarded as something more symbolic than tangible. The author situates the Holy Spirit as existing “like a beam” of light which emanates from the Father downward to prophets. The important thing, symbolically speaking, is that this light then bounces off the prophets and back and then back again to God. The implicit meaning of this transaction being that men might then be capable of spreading the word of God which can only become knowable to them through this engagement with the Holy Spirit.
Zeus
Zeus is the author’s ironic symbol of the hypocrisy of Romans attacking Christians on the basis of sexual deviancy. He smashes the ironic point home with all the bluntness of a sledgehammer used to drive in a single nail. The all-powerful mythic god of the Romans, the reader is reminded, includes countless episodes of incestuous and bestial sexual activity on the part of Zeus.
