Mythology and Fables Explained by History (1764) - Page 11

(1) In two duodecimo volumes original: in-12; a standard small book size where each sheet is folded into 12 leaves in 1710; expanded with a third volume in 1715. A new edition was produced in 1742, by Briasson, for the benefit of young people. (2) See in Chapter I the judgment I pass on the Mythologies that preceded this one.

...Historical [Explanation] of Fables, which was the first essay I produced on this subject (1); but at the same time, the public seemed to desire a more extensive and more profound Mythology. This work, as enlightened people have often told me, is missing from our language; since, without mentioning the outdated style of those we have in French on this subject, one finds nothing systematic in them. The Fables are not traced back to any source or any specific time; the origin of the Gods is not developed there; one does not distinguish between those Gods who were often the same under different names; finally, if one finds some traces of History, they are drowned in a mass of arbitrary Allegories and Moralities (2).

Moreover, the authors of these Mythologies, deprived of the discoveries of the scholars who have come since, followed unreliable guides; and today we are in a better position than they were to treat this subject. What light indeed have the Meziriacs, the Bocharts, the Vossiuses, and several others not shed upon it? Claude-Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac, Samuel Bochart, and Gerardus Vossius were 17th-century polymaths whose work in philology, geography, and theology helped provide a historical and linguistic context for ancient myths And if these learned men had explained all the Fables as they explained those that happened to have some connection with the subjects they had undertaken to clarify, we would not need a new Mythology.

To satisfy what was expected of me, I formed the design for the work I am presenting today. My Dissertations on different subjects of Fable, which are printed in the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles-Lettres The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, a French learned society devoted to the humanities and history, and the explanations I added to the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses Ovid was a Roman poet; his Metamorphoses is a chronological narrative of the world told through myths of transformation, prove that I never lost sight of it.

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