In “Modern Painters,” Vol.  III., he had followed out the indications of nature-worship, and tried to analyse in general terms the attitude of the Greek spirit towards landscape scenery, as betrayed in Homer and Aristophanes and the poets usually read.  Since that time his interest in Greek literature had been gradually increasing.  He had made efforts to improve his knowledge of the language; and he had spent many days in sketching and studying the terra-cottas and vases and coins at the British Museum.  He had also taken up some study of Egyptology, through Champollion, Bunsen and Birch, in the hope of tracing the origin of Greek decorative art.  Comparative mythology, at that time, was a department of philology, introduced to the English public chiefly by Max Mueller.  Under his influence Ruskin entered step by step upon an inquiry which afterwards became of singular importance in his life and thought.

In 1865 he had told his hearers at Bradford that Greek Religion was not, as commonly supposed, the worship of Beauty, but of Wisdom and Power.  They did not, in their great age, worship “Venus,” but Apollo and Athena.  And he regarded their mythology as a sincere tradition, effective in forming a high moral type, and a great school of art.  In the “Ethics of the Dust” he had explained the myth of Athena as parallel to that of Neith in Egypt; and in his fable of Neith and St. Barbara he had hinted at a comparison, on equal terms, of Ancient and Mediaeval mythology.  He ended by saying that, though he would not have his young hearers believe “that the Greeks were better than we, and that their gods were real angels,” yet their art and morals were in some respects greater, and their beliefs were worth respectful and sympathetic study.  The “Queen of the Air” is his contribution to this study.

On March 9th, 1869, his lecture at University College, London, on “Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm,” began with an attempt to explain in popular terms how a myth differs from mere fiction on the one hand and from allegory on the other, being “not conceived didactically, but didactic in its essence, as all good art is.”  He showed that Greek poetry dealt with the series of Nature-myths with which were interwoven ethical suggestions; that these were connected with Egyptian beliefs, but that the full force of them was only developed in the central period of Greek history, and their interpretation was to be read in a sympathetic analysis of the spirit of men like Pindar and AEschylus.  “The great question,” he said, “in reading a story is, always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it.  And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the nation among whom it was current.”