Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Theagenes of Rhegium" in English language version.
Whatever his presuppositions may be, the author of this commentary on the Orphic theogony is clearly heir to an interpretive tradition pertaining primarily to the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to Porphyry, this interpretive tradition goes back to Theagenes of Rhegium.
Nothing comparable survives from writers earlier than Protagoras and Parmenides. The earliest clear samples of allegorical narrative used rhetorically are thus later, by at least a generation, than allegorical interpretation itself (Theagenes) or rationalized and "corrected" mythological narrative (Stesichorus)