PREFACE.

...constantly present the same objects to us; and as if sacred and secular history did not provide enough interesting facts capable of inspiring virtuous sentiments in us, we borrow our subjects from Mythology original: "la Fable"; in this period, the term "Fable" was used to refer to the entire corpus of classical myths, especially in our Dramatic Poetry referring to the theater, specifically tragedies.

Our theaters resound every day with the complaints of Iphigenia and Andromache, the furies of Orestes, and the outbursts of Achilles and Clytemnestra; and let us not blush to admit it: we always see these Heroes and Heroines upon our stage with a renewed pleasure, while we often find it difficult to endure other characters better suited to excite a noble emulation within us.

It is therefore useful, and even in some way necessary, to know Mythology; thus we see that those who are ignorant of it are considered to be lacking in education and in the insights most necessary for a man of letters. But when one comes to consider that these Fables are not pure fictions—as I prove at the beginning of this work—that they have a real relationship with the history of the earliest ages, that they contain significant events, and that most of the Gods were once men whose history forms part of the history of the peoples who worshipped them: then Mythology becomes a more important object, and at the same time more worthy of our curiosity.

It was this historical foundation, hidden beneath the veil original: "enveloppe," literally "envelope" or "shell" of the Fable, which was the primary object of my research when I began to apply myself to the study of Mythology, and the Public favorably received the Historical Explanation...