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.