Mythos

Mythos, defined as "a sum total of stories, values, faith, feelings, and roles that make up the social character of a people” [1], was a basic tool used in Greco-Roman rhetoric illustrated by Aristotle in The Poetics, and exemplified by Nestor in The Iliad. Aristotle employed the term mythos to refer to plot within a drama, citing it as the single most important aspect that drives action in his discussion of tragedies [2]. In The Iliad, Rabel (1997) refers to mythos as “the most persuasive rhetorical weapon in the heroic armory” [3]. Using personal narrative and plot to further a claim, Nestor often referenced his own past in battles as a reason why action should be taken in a particular way, in addition he employed names and battles that the people he was speaking to would be familiar with, to pull together the collective and form an alliance. Mythos worked for those reasons: its focus on the speaker, utilization of recollection, and ability to allow for understanding that everyone was familiar with created a persuasive tool that, in the case of Nestor, rarely failed.

Despite popular belief, Mythos as an idea did not begin with the Greeks and Romans- it merely flourished with them. Many researchers admit that “myths certainly appeared…before the Hellenistic world” with references to Mesopotamia, The Bible, and various cultures, particularly from The East, as examples of where mythos was established and used to enhance the lives of the people who followed them [4]. Even the Sophists employed mythos as a rhetorical tool: Protagoras used a story to discuss the "art" of justice and society, drawing on the likes of Zeus and Prometheus to sway his audiences [5].

Mythos as a plausible rhetorical strategy appears to have died out with Plato, who argued that [mythos] “fostered an uncritical absorption of the dominant ideology” because of its “hypnotic effects” [6]. Plato would go on to write a variety of arguments denouncing the Sophists use of mythos as a rhetorical tool. It was later argued that Plato employed his own form of mythos in the Republic, showing the turning point in the viability of mythos as a rhetorical concept [5].

In modern society, the concept of mythos is no longer viable; when a story is called a “myth” it doesn’t have positive connotations that would be able to persuade the listener to take action in response— many writers now use the word to refer to something that is “idle and unbelievable” [5]. Look to titles of books released in the past year alone: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street or The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. These titles, and the books themselves, suggest that mythos is now a negative term, something we must not fall subject to, that we have to work past to fully understand the “reality” of whatever the subject may be. Insteaded of being persuaded by the nature of a mythos, when we belief something to be a myth, it is a falsehood, and as such, can't be trusted.

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References

1. Osborn, M, & Osborn, S. (1988). Public Speaking. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
2. Heath M. (1996) Aristotle’s Poetics. Penguin Classics.
3. Rabel, R. J. (1997). Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the interpretation of Iliad 9. Arethusa 30, 297-307.
4. Henderson, I. H. (1996). Jesus, rhetoric and law. Brill.
5. Woodard, R.D. (2007). The Cambridge companion to Greek mythology, Cambridge University Press, 210-212.
6. Greenbaum, A. (2002) Emancipatory movements in composition: the rhetoric of possibility. SUNY Press, 12-13.