ABSTRACT
Introduction Anyone who undertakes to speak or write about the relationship of myth and history in antiquity is asking for trouble, because he or she is immediately faced with the task of defi ning these diffi cult terms. On the surface, myth and history suggest a set of contrasts between fantasy and reality, fi ction and fact, the supernatural and the natural, the paradigmatic act and the singular, unrepeatable event. Or one can speak of contrasting modes of consciousness in which the mythological and the historical are set at diff erent poles: the one timeless and otherworldly, the other bound to chronology and to concrete factual experiences. One can point to myth’s close association with religion, ritual and the world of the gods while viewing history as basically secular and political.
