Abstract

The word myth is commonly thought to mean a fictional story, but few know that Plato was the first to use the term _muthos_ in that sense. He also used _muthos_ to describe the practice of making and telling stories, the oral transmission of all that a community keeps in its collective memory. In the first part of _Plato the Myth Maker_, Luc Brisson reconstructs Plato's multifaceted description of _muthos_ in light of the latter's Atlantis story. The second part of the book contrasts this sense of myth with another form of speech that Plato believed was far superior: the _logos_ of philosophy.