Description

The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. The so-called divinities of Olympus have not a single worshipper amongliving men. They belong now not to the department of theology, butto those of literature and taste. There they still hold theirplace, and will continue to hold it, for they are too closelyconnected with the finest productions of poetry and art, bothancient and modern, to pass into oblivion.

We propose to tell the stories relating to them which have comedown to us from the ancients, and which are alluded to by modernpoets, essayists, and orators. Our readers may thus at the sametime be entertained by the most charming fictions which fancy hasever created, and put in possession of information indispensable toevery one who would read with intelligence the elegant literatureof his own day.

In order to understand these stories, it will be necessary toacquaint ourselves with the ideas of the structure of the universewhich prevailed among the Greeks—the people from whom the Romans,and other nations through them, received their science andreligion.