PREFACE TO THE

REVISED EDITION.

An ornamental woodcut initial 'Q' is decorated with intricate floral and vine patterns.
What was accomplished in the first edition of the Treatises on the Syrian Gods original: "Syntagmatum de Diis Syris" is sufficiently understood from the Preface of that same work, which you, Reader, have placed immediately before this one. A few things must also be said in advance regarding this revised edition; specifically, to briefly explain its origin and the nature of our labor within it. It has been more than a decade since this little book first appeared in London. For a long time now, copies of it have been difficult to find in booksellers' shops. Requests for it have even come through letters from friends in France, in Holland original: "Batavia," the Latin name for the region of the Netherlands., and elsewhere, as they were not for sale at all. Consequently, during the summer of last year, those excellent men, Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevier, printers for the University of Leiden, consulted me about a new edition; promising that, if I agreed, they would commit it to their presses. I therefore promised them a revised, corrected, and expanded copy. To ensure I finished this more quickly, those most learned and distinguished men, Daniel Heinsius and Louis de Dieu, deigned to grant me—besides their very friendly encouragement—a promise of guidance in directing the work wherever it was needed. I indeed promised it within a month or two. But, distracted by duties elsewhere, the promise which I was unable The text cuts off here at the catchword "libera-", likely intending "liberare," meaning to fulfill or discharge a promise.