In the year 414 b.c. Aristophanes of Athens produced a play which has intrigued the world ever since. It is an uproarious comedy based upon the recapture by the birds, under the leadership of human beings, of the Kingdom of the Universe. The birds, in fact, had ruled it originally. The Olympians were usurpers.

Students of comparative religion have long been familiar with the evidence furnished by ancient Mediterranean myth and ritual pointing to the existence of a common fund of religious experience amongst the early civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. In spite of wide divergences between the views of anthropologists of the extreme diffusionist and anti-diffusionist schools, there has in the last twenty-five years or so been a decided reaction in favour of the historical method in this field of study, and there appears to be general agreement that a common culture-pattern, embodied in a common fund of myth and ritual, existed in Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. This hypothesis of a common pattern is supported by an ever-increasing volume of archaeological evidence. Routes of migration of peoples and commercial and other cultural contacts indicate a complex interchange of ideas between the Near East and the Mediterranean region generally. Of cardinal importance for the understanding of these mutual relations in early times are the discoveries in Crete, where evidence of extensive cultural relations with the Orient and Egypt, as well as with the mainland of Greece, has come to light.

‘Athenagoras was Alphius before, now he becomes Olphius after that he has married a wife.’ (Translated by Walter C. A. Ker, Loeb edition.)

This Danish scholar is known to the British public not only through his works but also through an essay by Henry Nettleship and the mention made of him in the well-known book on the history of classical scholarship by J. E. Sandys. At the 150th anniversary of his birth Greece and Rome has found it proper to publish an article on Madvig from a Danish source, and in any case it does seem only right to stop and consider for a moment his work from a modern standpoint.