mythology
mythologyis the field of scholarship dealing with myth but also a particular body of myths. Myth goes back to the Greek word mythos, which originally meant ‘word, speech, message’ but in the 5th cent. bc started to acquire the meaning ‘entertaining, if not necessarily trustworthy, tale’. The Romans used the word fabula, which was also used in modern discussions until c.1760, when the Göttingen classicist C. G. Heyne (1729–1812) coined the word mythus in order to stress the inner veracity of myth. No universally accepted definition of myth exists, but Walter Burkert's statement that ‘myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance’ gives a good idea of the main characteristics of myth.
Let us start with the problem of tradition. Homer already mentions the Argonauts, the Theban Cycle (see Homer, 9), and the deeds of