Through the possession of these Pagan cameos and intaglios we have become heirs to the most thorough knowledge of Mythology.

Hundreds of distinct specimens may be gathered from glyptic work centuries before Christ, and so arranged as to form several genealogical trees.

In Mythology there is not one single ancestor of all, as in the biblical history, where Adam is honored with being our original and only progenitor and equally censured with being the testator of our legacy of all human ills. The myriad bigamist ancestors of the countless mythological beings pictured on ancient gems have created and bequeathed to us numerous families of celestial and terrestrial divinities, denizens of earth, air, and water, and hundreds of grotesque chimeras.

Like the royal families of our sphere, there was much intermarriage of close relatives, many of their offspring bearing at times the forms of animals, birds, and anon reptiles. Some of their descendants were even metamorphosed in those tropical climes into trees, under the cooling umbrage of which other scions were born and commenced their adventurous career.

These poetical conceptions were the mythological forerunners of the simpler, purer, diviner religion which was eventually given to man. A close observer may find in these legendary myths antetypes of the omnipotent Godhead now revealed to us and in which is our sure hope and trust.