When this work first appeared, three-and-twenty years ago, it
became at once an object of unmerited abuse, and of equally
unmerited praise. Small divines mistaking it for an insidious
attempt to overthrow opinions " as by law established," spurted
at it with pens dipped in the milk of the Gospel ; whilst, under
the very same hallucination, " Friends of Light " lauded it to
the skies-either party equally ignorant both of the subject,
and of the purpose of my labours. One noted Zoihis (whose
recollections of Homer would seem to be of the same deeplymarked
nature as Ensign Blifil's) is disgusted at my citing
" Aidoneus " as a title of the God of the Shades ; another is
astonished at my ignorance in calling Bardanes a Persian,
whereas he was a native of Pontus ; not understanding that
my argument was equally valid in spite of the mistake-Pontus
being originally a province of the empire of Darius, and what
is more to the purpose, the actual focus whence Mithraicism
diffused itself over the Eoman world.