The figure of the monkey in ancient Greece appeals both to the historian of the imagination, who is captivated by this creature whose iconographic study remains embryonic, and to the religious anthropologist, who is tempted to see in it an emblematic expression of Greek ontological and religious concepts. While the animal’s introduction into the Mediterranean region, like some of its fi gurative representations, owes much to the East, the imagery surrounding monkeys, imbued with the mysteries of representations of passage, owes its particular contours to Greece in the first millennium BC. The monkey, a mirror for mankind, certainly presented a theological issue and this introductory study (conceived of in juxtaposition to philosophical debates on Darwinism) will attempt to shed light upon it.