and the present series of
essays, besides a numerous series of articles and monographs, makes
manifest the same painstaking and thorough scholarship; but he is something
more than the mere _savant_ who has at command a vast and difficult body of
knowledge. He is also the literary architect who builds up his material
into well-ordered and graceful structure.

Above all, M. Cumont is an interpreter. In _The Mysteries of Mithra_ he put
into circulation, so to speak, the coin of the ideas he had minted in the
patient and careful study of _Textes et Monuments_; and in the studies of
_The Oriental Religions_ he is giving to the wider public the
interpretation of the larger and more comprehensive body of knowledge of
which his acquaintance with the religion of Mithra is only a part, and
against which as a background it stands. What his book _The Mysteries of
Mithra_ is to his special knowledge of Mithraism, _The Oriental Religions_
is to his knowledge of the whole field. He is thus an example of the
highest type of scholar--the exhaustive searcher after evidence, and the
sympathetic interpreter who mediates between his subject and the lay
intellectual life of his time.

And yet, admirable as is M. Cumont's presentation in _The Mysteries of
Mithra_ and _The Oriental Religions_, nothing is a greater mistake than to
suppose that his popularizations are facile reading. The few specialists in
ancient religions may indeed sail smoothly in the current of his thought;
but the very nature of a subject which ramifies so extensively and so
intricately into the whole of ancient life, concerning itself with
practically all the manifestations of ancient {vii}
civilization--philosophy, religion, astrology, magic, mythology,
literature, art, war, commerce, government--will of necessity afford some
obstacle to readers unfamiliar with the study of religion.

It is in the hope of lessening somewhat this natural difficulty of
assimilating M. Cumont's contribution to knowledge, and above all, to life,
that these brief words of introduction are undertaken. The presentation in
outline of the main lines of thought which underlie his conception of the
importance of the Oriental religions in universal history may afford the
uninitiated reader a background against which the author's depiction of the
various cults of the Oriental group will be more easily and clearly seen.

M. Cumont's work, then, transports us in imagination to a time when
Christiani