[4] Conti believed that the ancient poets had meant for their presentations of myths to be read as allegory, and accordingly constructed intricate genealogical associations within which he found layers of meaning.

Taking a Euhemeristic approach, Conti thought that the characters in myth were idealized human beings, and that the stories contained philosophical insights syncretized through the ages and veiled so that only "initiates" would grasp their true meaning.

[8] Odysseus, for instance, becomes an Everyman whose wanderings represent a universal life cycle: Conti creates an ahistorical mythology that he hopes will reconnect his readers to their own primordial archetypal hero.

For Conti, myth was a literary artifact on which the mythographer could freely use his imagination to reinvent the literal subject matter into a kind of 'metatext,' which the interpreter reconstructs into his idealized self-imaging text.

[11] Nor were criticisms of Conti confined to later times: Joseph Scaliger, twenty years his junior, called him "an utterly useless man" and advised Setho Calvisio not to use him as a source.