Proclus, Theologia Platonica; Michael Psellos

He says that all these are most absurd; but rather, in a manner more persuasive and made equal to both truth and piety, it is fitting to fashion a harmonious form for one another’s discourses concerning the gods: by attributing the cause of all good things to the divine, but of no evil; by being not even sharing in any change, but always keeping its own things in the same state, and preserving it as without falsehood; and by having pre-contained within itself the cause of truth, while never becoming the cause of deception for others. Such are the types of theology which Socrates also seems to have suggested. Therefore, all the myths of Plato, while guarding the truth in secret, do not have a teaching that is discordant with his proclaimed doctrine, nor with our innate, truthful, and undistorted preconception concerning the gods, but on the contrary, they present it in a cosmic fashion. In this, there is both the apparent and the outward-turned; and the divine aspect of this is established in the invisible lives and powers of the gods.

If, then, you distinguish the myths of these realities in this manner, you have moved from the apparent toward the lawless and irrational state and limit; and though the composition aims at the beautiful and the good—being reasonable, yet not every kind of knowledge is clearly [treated]—it is necessary to preserve their purity, assigning contemplation everywhere to natural things, so as to in no way confound, nor indiscriminately mix theological and physical contemplation. For just as the divine itself is set apart from the whole of nature, so indeed it is fitting for the discourses concerning the gods to have purity in every respect from the study concerning nature. For such a task is laborious, and it does not at all befit a good man to make the hidden meaning of myths—namely, physical affections—his end, and to subject himself to physical fictions [by explaining] the Chimera and the Gorgon and each of such things. For Socrates also did these things, clearly finding fault [with them]. Such as if playing...