P R E F A C E.

...[is] most useful and most interesting; and it will be clearly seen that often my consideration for them The author refers here to his readers, prioritizing their understanding over a display of his own learning. has been dearer to me than my own reputation; for it is no small thing for an author to suppress points of erudition that he has at hand, and which would cost him no more than the effort to transcribe.

This, then, is the method I have followed. When I use the testimony of an Author, I usually report their words and provide a translation; and when such a translation is missing, the discourse that precedes or follows the quotation makes its meaning clear enough. I take care, as much as possible, to cite the oldest authors before those who followed later; thus Homer and Hesiod among the Poets, and Herodotus and some others among the Historians, are always preferred over those who came after them.

It is not that I neglect these latter ones: they may have consulted Traditions or Works that still existed in their time; and the earliest writers certainly did not say everything: it is only a matter of the preference I give to some over others. The Poets, who have transmitted so many fictions to us, are nonetheless—whatever may be said of them—the first keepers of the ancient Traditions of Greece, and its first Historians, since writing in Prose began there only very late.

To the Poets and Historians I have sometimes added Medals Médailles: In the eighteenth century, this term was commonly used to refer to ancient coins, which were studied as historical evidence alongside texts. and Inscriptions, because these are monuments that attest to ancient Tradition.

Regarding the Moderns who have worked on this subject, I limit myself to report—