ABSTRACT
However far back we go mythology has been interpreted. According to Plato in the Phaedrus, the Sophists created the philosophy of suspicion when they started to practise disbelief and to bring the narratives back down to earth. To say that Orythia was carried off by Boreas means simply that a woman died after being blown off a cliff by the north wind. What about centaurs, the Chimaera, the Gorgon, Pegasus and the other legendary monsters? Painstaking analysis could also ‘set them straight’. The Stoics were subsequently to translate the whole of Greek polytheism into metaphysical terms relating to matter, form and natural phenomena. Plutarch, too, was to create a theory of symbolic overdetermination which Lévi-Strauss has praised, claiming that Plutarch understood the central principle of structuralism in recognising that a multiplicity of codes were interwoven in myth. Thus, early in the western tradition, myth became a narrative that could be understood only by going beyond its literal meaning. A refusal to take this step meant sticking to popular opinion, allowing oneself to be swayed by unquestioning beliefs.
