The German scholar Hermann Usener (1834–1905) made an important contribution to nineteenth-century scholarship in the fields of philology and comparative religion. In order to recreate a picture of the religions of the Greco-Roman world he drew on elements from the fields of ethnology, phenomenology and hermeneutics. This four-volume collection of essays and reviews was published posthumously in 1912–1914. Volume 4 (1913) contains 22 of Usener's essays on the history of religion, arranged in chronological order. Usener's impressive command of the field is demonstrated in this wide-ranging book, which includes studies of the god Kallone, flood myths, John Chrysostom's understanding of the origins of the divine liturgy, and Keraunos, the King of Macedonia.
