"Everything repeats itself, everything comes back again, but always with some slight twist in its meaning: in the modern age the group of initiates becomes the police force. And there is always some tiny territory untouched by the anthropologists' fine-tooth comb that survives, like an archaic island, in the modern word: thus is is that antiquity we come across the emissaries of a reality that was to unfold more than two thousand years later."
Calasso makes a really cool point here.
Basically, he emphasizes that the events that took place so long ago continue to repeat themselves, and every time they do, we gain a new piece of valuable information. Greek mythology not only explains why things are the way they are (the "reality that was to unfold"), but it also paves the way for new interpretation. Events don't literally have to occur again, but maybe, by studying history over and over again, one can find bits of knowledge that have been overlooked.
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