And in his play called Sappho, Antiphanes represents the poetess herself as proposing griphi[1], which we may call riddles, in this manner: and then someone else is represented as solving them. For she says—
S. There is a female thing which holds her young
Safely beneath her bosom; they, though mute,
Cease not to utter a loud sounding voice
Across the swelling sea, and o'er the land,
Speaking to every mortal that they choose;
But those who present are can nothing hear,
Still they have some sensation of faint sound.
And some one, solving this riddle, says—
B. The female thing you speak of is a city;
The children whom it nourishes, orators;
They, crying out, bring from across the sea,
From Asia and from Thrace, all sorts of presents
The people still is near them while they feed on
And pour reproaches ceaselessly around,
While it nor hears nor sees aught that they do.
S. But how, my father, tell me, in God's name,
Can you e'er say an orator is mute,
Unless, indeed, he's been three times convicted?
B. And yet I thought that I did understand
The riddle rightly. Tell me then yourself.
And so then he introduces Sappho herself solving the riddle, thus—
S. The female thing you speak of is a letter,
The young she bears about her is the writing:
They're mute themselves, yet speak to those afar off
Whene'er they please. And yet a bystander,
However near he may be, hears no sound
From him who has received and reads the letter[2]
(Athenaeus-of-Naucratis 1854).
Myth is a feature of every culture. The study of myth began in ancient times. Plato, Euhemerus, and Sallustius, a 4th-century writer, initiated different schools of interpretation of mythology, further developed by the Neo-Platonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers. The 19th-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science
There are many other theories about the origin of myths. Greek gods originally were human beings
Müller adopted an allegorical theory of myth. He argued that myths begin as metaphorical descriptions of nature and finish interpreted literally. For instance, if a poetic allegory of a 'raging' sea is taken literally, the sea is eventually interpreted as a raging god
Some claim that myths result from the personification of objects and forces. According to this view, the ancients worshipped natural phenomena, such as fire and air, gradually deifying them
Yet, according to the myth-ritual theory, myth is tied to ritual
The English term mythology derives from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία (mythología; mythology, legendary lore, telling of legends, legend, story or tale) from μῦθος (mythos, myth), and -λογία (-logia; study;
The word mythología first appears in Plato but was used as a general term for 'fiction' or 'story-telling' of any kind, combining mythos (μῦθος; narrative, fiction) and -logia (discourse, reasoning, ability to speak about;
All which may still be received in some acceptions of morality and to a pregnant invention may afford commendable mythology. Still, in a natural and proper exposition, it containeth impossibilities and things inconsistent with truth
The term mythology came to be applied by analogy to similar bodies of traditional stories, among other polytheistic cultures worldwide.
The Greeks reacted to the improbability and immorality of certain myths. They began to study mythical stories to find hidden meanings, account for those absurd aspects, or even eliminate them and develop corrected and more likely versions. Indeed, from the 6th century BC, the word mythos (narrative) was gradually devalued in favour of the term logos, which was – or thought to be – originally a synonym. Logos is associated with a truthful and rational account, while mythos takes a pejorative connotation meaning "tell a lie." This shift in meaning occurs under pre-Socratic philosophers such as Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570 – c. 475 BC). Xenophanes rebelled against poets like Homer and Hesiod, who attributed human traits and weaknesses to gods. This questioning of the myths initiates a movement that leads to either correcting them and making them correspond to the gods' dignity and perfection or explaining their absurdities with a more satisfying hidden meaning. I will argue that mythos means a covered object, an honest but encrypted story. Instead, logos is the pause for reflection and recharging (with arguments) between phrases of active speech, i.e., thinking.
Poets, writers, and commentators do the 'rectification' of myths. For the authors, this activity becomes a creative engine for developing new variants of myths. From the archaic period, the poet Pindar (c. 522 – c. 443 BC) explicitly regards the statements of some of his predecessors from some distance and says that we must lend to the gods only beautiful actions. In the first Olympian, for example, he refuses to accept the story of the cannibal banquet in which the gods had eaten Pelops before resurrecting him. Instead, he prefers to say that Poseidon abducted Pelops because he had fallen in love with the young man and that the story of cannibalism is nothing but slander spread by ill-intentioned neighbours [3]. The commentators of later eras also undertake to correct the myths. For example, Palaephatus (4th or 3rd century BC) wrote rationalized myths. His method mainly consists of eliminating all the marvellous elements he judges to be contrary to verisimilitude and bringing the narratives back to plots compatible with a supposed historical truth.
But questioning the content of myths also gives rise to the exegesis of the texts that relate to them. Thus, at about the same time when Xenophanes and others violently criticize poets for the unworthy actions they give to the gods, Theagenes of Rhegium (529–522 BC) is the first to resort to allegory to justify Homer and save the text as it is. According to Theagenes, the battles between the gods symbolize the struggle between the natural elements and other cosmic phenomena. This interpretation begins Homer's allegorical readings and the philosophical arguments about the myths, which multiply in later centuries.
In the first centuries AD, the development of Christianity led to a struggle between Christians and supporters of paganism. In this context, Christian writers employ myths, among other things, to devalue the pagan gods based on the same arguments already used in the classical period by the pagans themselves to reject these stories, which lend immoral and shameful acts to the deities. For example, in book II of his treatise Ad Nationes, Tertullian argues that myths are outrageous and absurd fables invented by philosophers and poets, concluding that pagan gods are false gods.
Today, talking about the mythology of contemporary religions, for example, biblical mythology, may be considered by some believers as an offence to their faith or even a manifestation of intolerance. Indeed, the notion of myth is nowadays fiction, questioning the truth to which the sacred narratives of present-day religions claim. This confrontation poses the problem of the different regimes of truth proper to myths and religious beliefs in general, the reality of faith not necessarily being the historical truth.
[1] Phonetic plural of Greek γρῖφος (griphos), meaning anything intricate, dark saying, riddle or forfeit paid for failing to guess a riddle.
