"...The religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. The so- called divinities of Olympus have not a single worshipper among living men. They belong now not to the department of theology but to those of literature and taste. There they still hold their place and will continue to hold it for they are too closely connected with the finest productions of poetry and art both ancient and modern to pass into oblivion.

We propose to tell the stories relating to them which have come down to us from the ancients and which are alluded to by modern poets essayists and orators. Our readers may thus at the same time be entertained by the most charming fictions which fancy has ever created and put in possession of information indispensable to every one who would read with intelligence the elegant literature of his own day.

In order to understand these stories it will be necessary to acquaint ourselves with the ideas of the structure of the universe which prevailed among the Greeks the people from whom the Romans and other nations through them received their science and religion..."