The cults of the greek states is a series of works by lewis richard farnell, d. Litt., first published between 1896 and 1909, in five volumes (at the outset farnell had only planned for there to be three), at the clarendon press, oxford. The works were groundbreaking because it was the first time that any scholar, let alone an oxford scholar, had attempted to disentangle the history of greek religion from that of greek mythology. There was need for the two to be separated since greek mythology had at the time, in literary circles at any rate, a reputation of being a "bizarre and hopeless thing". The work, as farnell freely states in his preface, is indebted to frazer's the golden bough, which generated a whole new way of studying and analysing religion, i. E. Comparatively and abstractly.