s a very difficult
one owing to the scattered and chaotic nature of the sources, and even
where we get away from fragments and reconstructions and reach definite
treatises with or without authors' names, I cannot pretend to feel
anything like the same clearness about the true meaning of a passage in
Philo or the Corpus Hermeticum that one normally feels in a writer of
the classical period. Consequently in this essay I think I have hugged
my modern authorities rather close, and seldom expressed an opinion for
which I could not find some fairly authoritative backing, my debt being
particularly great to Reitzenstein, Bousset, and the brilliant
_Hellenistisch-roemische Kultur_ of P. Wendland. I must also thank my
old pupil, Mr. Edwyn Bevan, who was kind enough to read this book in
proof, for some valuable criticisms. The subject is one of such
extraordinary interest that I offer no apology for calling further
attention to it.

A word or two about the last brief revival of the ancient religion under
'Julian the Apostate' forms the natural close to this series of studies.
But here our material, both historical and literary, is so abundant that
I have followed a different method. After a short historical
introduction I have translated in full a very curious and little-known
ancient text, which may be said to constitute something like an
authoritative Pagan creed. Some readers may regret that I do not give
the Greek as well as the English. I am reluctant, however, to publish a
text which I have not examined in the MSS., and I feel also that, while
an edition of Sallustius is rather urgently needed, it ought to be an
edition with a full commentary.[xvi:1]

I was first led to these studies by the wish to fill up certain puzzling
blanks of ignorance in my own mind, and doubtless the little book bears
marks of this origin. It aims largely at the filling of interstices. It
avoids the great illuminated places, and gives its mind to the stretches
of intervening twilight. It deals little with the harvest of flowers or
fruit, but watches the inconspicuous seasons when the soil is beginning
to stir, the seeds are falling or ripening.

G. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[xvi:1] Professor Nock's edition (Cambridge 1926) has admirably filled
this gap.

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. SATURNIA REGNA