I like how the poet prefaces the book with prologues are are in essence a disclaimer. When he says that words are not in and of themselves important, but the meaning that is attached when they are put together is the truth that should be harvested ( see what I did there?). He's basically saying that allegory is a tool used to make the tale interesting and convey the theme, and he writes about sin in the story to ward against it. He even quotes Saint Gregory about how an arrow spotted deals less damage. He acknowledges that some will think his work is not good for young eyes to see, but insists that without knowledge of it, one cannot defend oneself from it as easily.
The character Socrates in Plato's republic said that allegory can confuse a young person, and will not be able to distinguish truth from lies. He later goes on the say that to have the perfect guardian, the perfect soldier, he must not have a shred of evil thoughts on his mind. This is interesting because both people want the same goal, but they have different approaches.
The poet's words in the prologue echo in each story. There are always at least two parties. One of whom acts godly, and the other acts ungodly, or at the very least foolishly. While not all stories have a clear winner, there is a bias in which the party that acts godly never ends up worse than when they started.There is also obvious language that unsubtly reveals a Christian bias, likely in an effort to if not persuade, or even influence the reader, at the very least, plants ideas in the reader's mind that they will recall in everyday life.
This is extremely apparent in the story of the Romans and the Greeks. They set up a sign language for a debate, and like in Ovid's Metamorphoses in the story of Narcissus (why does this harbor so much depth?), what one person means to say, and what the other interprets it as, can be completely different. Narcissus and Echo, or Narcissus and his echo, or perhaps they are the same. The Roman ruffian thinks his sign language is obvious, that the Greeks know what he is thinking, but his dress betrays his intentions. If he had not worn the garments of a doctor that his Roman superiors forced him to wear, the Greek doctor would've interpreted his intentions differently. The ruffian does not even notice how dress affects how one is seen, yet he affected by the same principle because he viewed the Greeks as weak and unready for conflict because of their dress.
The story has a second layer of meaning, but it links back to the nature of the poet and that is the heavy Christian bias here. It is an outright lie to say that the Greeks believed in only one God, especially one who created the world since we know in Greek mythology that the Gods didn't create Earth. The poet did this to hype God as being the result of much thought, thought that stood up to a myriad of questions.
Also, in Plato's Republic, the Socrates says that if a God exists, he could not be pure good and at the same time create man. Man is a creature of good and evil and therefore by creating man, God would then not be good. This God would then be forced to not do much, if anything at all, because most of what he could do to change the world would be evil for someone. The poet is ignorant of these writings, or ignores them to make God sound like an intelligent idea.
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