Mythology and Fables Explained by History

xvij

PREFACE.

This is how the History of the Gods & the Heroes has been preserved from age to age, and it is at the same time the foundation of the Historical Explanations of the Fables In the 18th century, "fables" was the standard term for what we now call myths or mythology.. But let us suppose for a moment that the Greeks did not write until very late; that Homer was their first Author, and that their Poetry began with a masterpiece—which would certainly be quite extraordinary—I still maintain that this Poet would have had sufficient resources for the substance of his two Poems. Greece held nothing more sacred than the Fables, which were part of her Religion; and they could not perish, if I may be allowed to express myself thus. Paintings, Statues, Games, and Festivals constantly recalled their memory; and Athens, which, according to Pausanias A Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, famous for his "Description of Greece.", had these Statues and Paintings in every quarter of the City and in every Temple, could have preserved the tradition alone.

(1) Book I, ch. 36.

Let us further add that some of the Sages of Greece, dissatisfied with the knowledge communicated to them by the colonies that had arrived at different times in their country, traveled to Egypt themselves to draw new knowledge from there; and that there were even some who made this journey before the Trojan War, that is to say, during the very time that Varro calls the fabulous times Referring to the "mythical age," a period Varro distinguished from the "unknown" and "historical" ages.. Diodorus Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the 1st century BC., who had also traveled in that country, positively asserts this and enters into the details of the knowledge that these Sages had gathered there and subsequently communicated to the Greeks. "The Priests read in their An-
» nals," says this Author (1), "that there had been seen
» among them Orpheus, Musaeus, Melampus, and Daedalus These figures represent the legendary founders of Greek music, poetry, medicine, and architecture/engineering, respectively., (for I am not speaking of Homer nor of the...