Mythos Fabula

Mythos/Fabula: Authoritative and Discredited Speech
Author(s): Maurizio Bettini

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 45, No. 3 (February 2006), pp. 195-212
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/503713
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Maurizio Bettini M Y T HO S / FA B U L A :
AU T H O R I TAT I V E A N D
DISCREDIT ED SPEECH
Before entering the fascinating world of Roman fabula—the main focus

of this essay—some preliminary remarks on the Greek tradition are prob-
ably needed. Therefore, let us briefly turn to mythos. What did the Greeks
mean by this word?
mythos the reliable

In the early Greek tradition—from Homer to Hesiod—the term mythos
obviously meant “word,” “discourse,” and “account.” But anyone who
would have expected mythos to come to be defined exclusively as an
imaginative sacred tale or simply as a story not to be taken as fact—all of
the meanings that the fortune of this word has accustomed us to—would
be destined to disappointment.1
In Homer and Hesiod, mythos does indeed indicate a discourse or
account, but not the unbelievable kind. So much so that in order to label
a discourse as false, it is not enough to define it as mythos; the term
1 Gioia Rispoli, Lo spazio del verisimile: Il racconto, la storia e il mito (Napoli: M. D’Auria
Editore, 1988), 29ff.; Gérard Naddaf, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Luc Brisson, Plato the
Myth Maker, trans. and ed. Gérard Naddaf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998),
vii–ix; Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3–18.
ç 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/2006/4503-0001$10.00
196 Mythos/Fabula
“deceptive” ( skolios ) needs to be added as well. 2 The unreliability of

the discourse is conveyed by the adjective that accompanies the word
mythos, and not by the word itself. Indeed, in archaic epic poetry accounts
or discourses that were indisputably authoritative were called mythoi.
The speech that the hawk delivers “with force” (epikratéos) to his prey
the nightingale is, in fact, mythos.3 The same mythos is applied to the
speech that the male warriors vehemently deliver on the battleground.
When Poseidon refuses Zeus’s order to abandon the fight, his “harsh
and powerful” answer is defined as mythos.4 The orations made during
assembly by heroes with sufficient standing to do so are defined as
mythos —for example, when Agamemnon threateningly sends Chryses
away or when Achilles refuses Agamemnon’s ambassadors in the Iliad.5
Mythos in epics is an assertive discourse. In any case, it is an authoritative
one.6 You may or may not agree with the discourse, but not on the grounds
that it is defined as mythos. This means that in archaic epic poetry, mythos
never indicates the discourse that others believe in.
Even in the philosophical texts that precede Plato, mythos continues
to suggest a reliable subject, and is not in opposition to the term logos.
“The learning of the philosophers, from Xenophanes through 530 up to
Empedocles, around 450, inflicts continual denial upon the rumors of our
contemporaries, who attribute to ‘rational thought’ the designs of abolish-
ing another form of thought whose instrument is ‘myth’, in the sense of
sacred stories or discourse about the gods.”7 In Xenophanes,8 mythoi
and logoi are spoken of in a nearly synonymous fashion, like discourse
imbued with pious sentiments. Some pre-Socratic philosophers, such as
Parmenides, regarded mythos quite positively, while others remained
neutral.9
toward unreliability
Pindar, however, who uses the expression mythos only three times, views
it negatively. For example, to underscore the falseness of the story of
Pelops, who was dismembered and served at the table of the gods, the poet
2
Hesiod, Hesiodi Opera, ed. F. Solmsen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 190–94.
3
Ibid., 206.
4
Homer, Homer’s Ilias, ed. T. W. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1931), bk. 15, 202.
5
Ibid., bk. 1, 25; bk. 9, 309.
6
Lincoln, Theorizing Myth.
7
Marcel Detienne, L’invention de la mythologie (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), 64. See also
Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Mythology, trans. Margaret Cook (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986).
8 Fragment 1, H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker (Berlin: Wiedmann,
1960).
9
Detienne, L’invention de la mythologie, 64–65; Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 25–32; Naddaf,
“Translator’s Introduction,” viii.
History of Religions 197
declares, “sometimes the utterances [phatis] of mortals go beyond truth:

mythoi, woven with ambiguous lies, deceive us.”10 In yet another instance,
the word mythoi is used to condemn the seduction of Homeric poetry, “lies
and deception by way of the sublime flight [meaning poetry] have some-
thing venerable about them; art [sophia] deceives us, seducing us with its
mythoi.”11 In the third usage, mythoi also appears in a negative context
(although this time it is modified by the adjective aimuloi or “deceptive”—
in which case we are dealing with a different instance): “adulation, the
companion of deceptive mythoi, creator of snares, repugnant and foul.”12
In Herodotus the word mythos occurs only twice, and he too seems to use
it to suggest an account that is not to be believed. To say that the Nile flows
to the ocean, as Homer does, means, according to Herodotus, “to take the
mythos to the invisible” and to affirm something that “cannot be disproved”
(ouk echei elenchon); when the Greeks purport that the Egyptians wanted
to sacrifice Heracles to Zeus, they are in reality recounting a “foolish”
mythos, demonstrating that they are unaware of the nature of the Egyp-
tian laws.13
In order to evaluate these last two examples, we must keep in mind the
fact that in Herodotus, just as with the first Greek historians, there was no
specific term to indicate accounts that are rebuffed due to unreliability;
neither can we assert that the term logos was employed to refer to that
which is true or reliable. To complicate matters further, it is well known
that the “father of history” relied heavily on stories and news that were
overstated or simply made up out of whole cloth.14 Therefore, although
Herodotus twice uses the expression mythos to define unreliable dis-
course—that which others believe in—this does not mean that we can
attribute to him a plan to free historical narrative from myth. Neither is it
possible to assert that he associated the word “myth” with any statement
that he himself judged to be unreliable. With regard to Thucydides, he
explicitly sets his work in opposition to that of the poets and the logo-
graphoi, whose main concern was not to arrive at the truth but to please
their audience. According to him, the logographoi compose stories that are
not subject to refutation (anexelenkta), “most of [which] have from lapse
10
Pindar Olympian 1.45– 47.
11
Pindar Nemean 7.22–23.
12
Pindar Nemean 8.53–56.
13
Thucydides, Thucydidis Historiae, ed. H. S. Jones and J. E. Powell, 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1967), 2.23, 45. See Detienne, L’invention de la mythologie, 67–70; Peter G.
Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity
to the Modern Age (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1994), 26–27.
14
Claude Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité grecque (Lausanne: Editions Payot,
1996), 30.
198 Mythos/Fabula
of time won their way into the realm of fabulous [mythodes].”15 The state-
ment is quite clear: mythodes characterizes an account that is not authori-
tative, one that can only be accepted by others. However, in spite of his
hostility toward the mythodes, Thucydides refrains from doubting the his-
torical validity of stories such as those of Minos or the Trojan War. For
us the stories obviously belong to mythological territory, though this was
not so for him.16
The aforementioned examples from Herodotus and Thucydides are in-
teresting, but care must be taken so as not to risk carrying them too far.
To the modern mind, indeed, the identification of that which is fantasy or
not credible, distinct from that which is true or ascertainable, corresponds
de facto to the distinction between that which is mythic and that which is
not. But as we have just said with respect to Herodotus, the same does not
hold true for Greek writers. When they attempted to distinguish truth from
falsehood, the ascertainable from hearsay, the historic from the fabled, not
only did their definition correspond only in part with our own, but they
did not necessarily use the word mythos to signify refuted information.
On the one hand is the linguistic history of the word mythos, and on the
other is the intellectual history of the category—true/false, historic/fabled,
gossip/document, written/oral, and so on—to which, at a certain point,
the word mythos came into play.
Having established this premise, it seems relatively clear that, in the
passage from archaic epic poetry to Pindar, Herodotus, and Thucydides,
the term mythos shifts in some way onto the terrain of the refutable or
fabled account: an account whose credibility is doubted by those who de-
fine it as mythos. After the fifth century BCE, the use of the word mythos
is recorded to describe things said by rivals “to praise the superiority of
one type of discourse over another.”17 It is also interesting that Herodotus
and Thucydides both attribute “irrefutability” as characteristic of mythos:
that which is not subject to elenchos. Insofar as mythos is “obscure” or “not
credible,” it can be neither accepted nor rejected; it belongs to an order
that is extraneous to normal assessment procedures. Livy as well later
repeats that he can neither “affirm” nor “refute” (refellere) the traditions
belonging to the time before the city was founded because they are
“adorned with poetic fabulae rather than based upon trustworthy historical
15
Thuc., Thucydidis Historiae, 1.21.1. See Detienne, L’invention de la mythologie, 71–82;
Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité grecque, 29–30; Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula,
23–33.
16
Arnold W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides: The Ten Years’ War (Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1956–70), 149; Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité grecque, 38–39.
17
George E. R. Lloyd, Demystifying Mentalities (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 55–58.
proofs.”18 If someone wants to believe in a particular mythos or fabula

they can do so, because it is not subject to refutation. However, when
somebody defines the story that they themselves are telling as mythos or
fabula, this indicates that it is a tale that others might give credence to,
but not the storyteller.
Plato’s stance on mythos—one so complex as to have sparked a noto-
riously never-ending debate—can, albeit with some difficulty, be summa-
rized in one paragraph. In an extreme synthesis,19 Plato’s mythos signified
above all a discursive practice, one used by the poets, who reorganized
subject matter into poetic form for the community to preserve its memo-
ries. Mythos is thereby an instrument of tradition. As for the characteristics
of mythos, Plato believed that it referred to distant things: things situated
in some remote area with respect to where the public was listening to the
story. It is for this very reason that mythos is open to criticism. The remote-
ness of the narrated events makes it impossible to subject mythoi to critical
scrutiny. Furthermore, the method of transmission ensures that mythoi
are full of inconsistencies, often ridiculous ones. Thus, mythoi remain the
prisoners of the tangible world, inextricably linked to human affairs, and
as such lack universality. But, above all, myths as stories do not develop
rational reasoning, but rather appeal to the emotions. Their instructive pre-
tenses do not go beyond simple imitation, which is why they are likened
to magic and spells. Plato, therefore, contrasts mythos with logos, or ra-
tional discourse, based on the rules of deductive reasoning similar to the
reasoning proposed by the geometricians of his time. It is the triumph of
philosophy. Except when instructing the select few who could appreciate
rational discourse, the philosopher too came to rely on mythos as a
powerful instrument of persuasion.
Hence, with Plato mythos seems to shift to the terrain of “mythic” in
the way that we now define the word, keeping in mind that the distinctions
are actually less clear cut than they might appear.20 If we define a discourse
as mythos today, it means that credibility is dubious, that we are dealing
with something poetic and fascinating, an enchanting tale that cannot,
however, satisfy the requirements of rationality. Aristotle gives a more
technical meaning to mythos, one that contributes significantly to the de-
velopment of our literary criticism.21 The term is used, in fact, to indicate
“the imitation of action” or rather “the composition of the facts” in tragedy,
that which we would call the “plot” of the work. It is in this same context
18
Livy Praefatio 6.
19
Gérard Naddaf, “Introduction,” in Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker, 7–11; Rispoli, Lo
spazio del verisimile, 43ff.
20
Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité grecque, 27–28.
21
Aristotle Poetics 50a.4ff.; see also 47a.9ff., 49b.8ff.
200 Mythos/Fabula
that history, the work of the historikos—he who narrates “things past”—
is contrasted with poetry, the work of the poietes—he who narrates “things
to come.”22 However, at other times Aristotle will turn to the dimension
of mythos in a way that is (for us) more familiar, to indicate a discourse that
does not satisfy the requirements of rationality, for example, by opposing
Hesiod’s way of expressing mythikos and preferring one supported by the
demonstration di’apodeixeos.23 Once again mythos defines a story that
others believe in, but not the person who has thusly defined it. It is, how-
ever, important to mention that it would be incorrect to reduce the problem
of myth in Aristotle to a cut-and-dried opposition of mythos/logos (the
second element automatically prevailing over the first). In comparing
the traditional mythoi, Aristotle appears to be much more accommodating
than we might expect.24 That happens both because he holds that mythic
accounts and science originate from the same explicative impulse and
because, according to the “endoxic” method, science can refer back to
mythic accounts to obtain workable data.25 But perhaps there could be
more. In fact, in accordance with his cyclical vision of history, Aristotle
maintained that the arts and sciences were discovered and rediscovered
innumerable times by mankind, and they handed down the acquisitions
of the past in the form of opinions.26 In this way, the mythoi could present
themselves as the remains of age-old scientific explanations, and conse-
quently be salvaged by rational discourse.27
the ambiguities of the fabula

What about the Romans? The question might appear incongruous because
they are not usually called to task when dealing with myth. But while their
autochthonous “mythology” may not have been among the most produc-
tive or enduring, certainly their language—which together with Greek is
preeminent in the European intellectual lexicon—made an important con-
tribution to the definition of myth. The Romans, in fact, equate mythos
with fabula. The Greek myths collected by Hyginus in his homonymous
work are fabulae, as fabulae are called the Greek myths from which the
22
Aristotle Poetics 51a.36ff.; see Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité grecque, 25–
26, 44– 45.
23
Aristotle Metaphysics 1000a.5ff., 1074b.1ff. See Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’an-
tiquité grecque, 26–27.
24
Rispoli, Lo spazio del verisimile, 49ff.
25
Thomas K. Johansen, “Myth and Logos in Aristotle,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies
in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. Richard Buxton (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 279–91.
26
Aristotle, Du ciel (De caelo), ed. and trans. P. Moraux (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1965),
270b, 19–20; see Myles Burnyeat, “Good Repute,” London Review of Books, November 6,
1986, 11–12.
27
Johansen, “Myth and Logos in Aristotle.”
One Line Long

philosopher must keep his distance, according to Cicero’s Balbus.28 Livy,

in the same fashion, defines the “mythological” tales of the Roman tra-
dition as fabulae—for example, the story of the shewolf who breastfeeds
the twins,29 or the one about Tarpeia who betrays her fellow citizens.30
In other words, Livy defines as fabulae the stories that, as a historian, he
does not feel he can believe in.
After having spoken about mythos, now might be the moment to put
forth some observations about fabula. Let us take a quick look at the uses
of this word. Beginning with those belonging specifically to literary pro-
duction—meaning “apologue” and above all “theatrical works”—fabula
means mainly “discourse” and “conversation,” then “rumor,” “hearsay,”
and finally “narration” and “story,” often with the negative connotations of
chitchat, idle talk, or rubbish. As we can see, there is often a dismissive
aura swirling around the term fabula so that when the term is applied to
a specific “discourse” it is meant to discredit it. Fabula, too, is the story
that others believe.
the powers of fari

What is the linguistic origin of the word fabula? It is clearly a substantive
derived from the verb fari. In fact, fabula is to fari as subula is to suere,
fibula to figo, and so on.31 From a morphological perspective, fabula is
the “instrument” that realizes the act of fari, as fibula is the instrument that
realizes the act of figere. If so, something striking happens: fabula pre-
sents itself as a rather frivolous noun derived from an extremely serious
verb. Fari is an archaic word that Cicero held to be obsolete even during
his time32 and was used to define the normal act of “speaking” exclusively
in texts whose stylistic level was quite high.33 This in itself is reason to
suspect that the act of fari presupposes a rather specific modality of speak-
ing, different from those implicated, respectively, by loquor, aio, or dico.
This impression is confirmed by a more detailed analysis.
The verb fari is primarily used to define the speech of the diviners, or
the voice that reveals hidden secrets, as in the case of Anchises, to whom
the goddess Venus fari donavit, “gave him the power to prophesize.”34
28
Cicero De Natura Deorum 2.28.70.
29
Livy Ab urbe condita 1.4.7.
30
Livy Ab urbe condita 1.11, 5–9. See also Livy Ab urbe condita 5.22.6 (the simulacrum
of Iuno in Veii: inde fabulae adiectum est. . .); 5, 21, 8 (the exta quickly brought to Camillus
in order to fulfill the augurium of victory expressed by the Etruscan priests: inseritur huic
loco fabula); the same episode is called mútheuma by Plutarch, Life of Camillus 5. See R. M.
Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, bks. 1–5 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 5.21.8, 675.
31
M. Leumann, Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre (München: C. H. Beck, 1977), 314.
32
Cicero, De oratore, ed. W. Friedrich (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912), 3, 153.
33
See, e.g., Virgil Aeneis 6:389: fare age, quid venias?
34
Ennius, The Annals of Quintus Ennius, ed. Otto Skutsch (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 19.
202 Mythos/Fabula
As a matter of fact, the ancient Roman religion had two divinities, Fatuus
and Fatua, who were known as prophetic,35 and whose names certainly
derived from fari. The tie between this verb and prophetic enunciation is
also clear from the fact that the first person in the present tense has never
been used,36 but is used for the future: fabor, never for. Those who speak
in the fari form also project the time of the enunciation into the future.
To better understand what kind of locution we are referring to when a
discourse is introduced with fabor, we can turn to a passage in Virgil’s
Aeneis. In the first book, Iuppiter undertakes to reveal to Venus the destiny
that awaits the Trojans in Italy, or rather to relate—in advance—the entire
“mythical history” of Aeneas in Latinum. He declares: fabor . . . longius,
“I will speak at length,” and then he adds, “and while I am laying out the
arcane designs of fate, I will set them in motion” (et volvens fatorum
arcana movebo).37 In the authoritative mouth of Iuppiter, in sum, the
prophetic fari corresponds directly to the realization of the statement.
This ability to “make real” the substance of the enunciation through the act
of fari—in other words, to bind the destiny of others through the words
he utters—corresponds very well with the way in which the Romans de-
fined “destiny.” It was classified as a “word,” a word that belongs equally
to the sphere of fari, that is, fatum. Destiny is a “saying,” but in the form
of an active revelation by a divine voice belonging to the sphere of fari.
This voice expresses one word, a fatum that at the same time both states
and decides individual destiny. This same quality of binding power might
also explain the relationship between the sphere of fari and another very
important term in the institutional lexicon of the Romans: fas, the noun
that indicates “that which is right, correct.” Indeed, according to Émile
Benveniste’s interpretation, when the formula fas est is used followed by
an infinitive, in the sense of “it is right and correct that . . . ,” it actually
means “it is the word (divine word) that. . . .”38
There are other spheres of fari that clearly show how “saying,” as iden-
tified with this verb, takes on a characteristic of “going into effect” that
bypasses a normal statement. Let us take, for example, the compound
prae-fari, literally “to pre-say,” or “to say before.” In this form the verb
fari designates the religious formulas that are used to precede curses
solemn pacts, oaths of devotion, and so forth. For example, Cicero’s
Quintus affirms that “our ancestors preceded [praefabantur] their every
35
Varro De lingua latina 6.52.55; Justinus Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei
Trogi 43.1.8.
36
Macrobius Excerpta grammaticalia 5.654.25.
37
Virgil Aeneis 1.261.
38
Émile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (London: Faber & Faber,
1975), 384.
initiative with the formula, ‘that it may be good, favorable, joyful and
fortunate.’ ”39 It is not simply a matter of saying one thing before another
or of prefacing a certain action with particular words. The act of praefari
indicates the moment when religious or juridical formulas are pronounced
and are held to be determinant for the outcome to be correct. Praefari sig-
nifies an “effectual” word. The same happens with another compound of
the verb for, effari. In fact, the expression effatus was used to indicate
a religious place—an ager in which auguria were taken, a templum, or
the pomoerium itself—that had been “defined” with the “precise words”
(certis verbis) of the ritual.40 A passage by the grammarian Festus pro-
poses an interesting comparison between the characteristic of being
effatum (“spoken”) of a particular templum, and its characteristic of being
saeptum (“closed”).41 Praefari, which comes from effari, is a word that
not only speaks of the sacred aspect of a location, but brings it into exist-
ence: it is a word that, as soon as it is spoken, surrounds, closes, and cir-
cumscribes.42 The power of effari is indisputable.
Now, let us try to define, from a linguistic/anthropological point of view,
what the specific characteristics of these kinds of statements might be. It
would seem that we are dealing with the following: fari assumes the role
of a linguistic act in which the “present speaker” (prophet, diviner,
priest) is not the actual, or the true, source transmitting the linguistic act.
His or her voice merges with the “main speaker”—a god or a super-
natural power—who lends authority, or rather validity, to the spoken
message.43 To further clarify the condition in which a speaker finds him/
herself when channeling in the sphere of fari, we might turn to the con-
cept of agency,44 by which we mean the abstract ability to conclude so-
cially relevant actions, or rather to have control over their execution. In
the sphere of fari—a discursive act in which a prophet “reveals” the hidden
truth, a priest utters the appropriate ritual formulas, or an augur verbally
creates a sacred space—there are two agencies that come into play, not just
39
Cicero De divinatione 1.102.
40
Varro, On the Latin Language, trans. Roland G. Kent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1938), 6, 53; Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum 13.42; Cicero, Traité des lois, trans.
and ed. G. de Plinval (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959), 2.8.20; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae
13, 14, etc.
41
Festus, Sexti Pompei Festi. De uerborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli Epitome.
Thewrewkianis copiis usus edidit, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 146.
42
“Pater patratus . . . multisque id verbis, quae longo effata carmine non operae est
referre, peragit” (Livy 1.24); “. . . Neque verbum ullum sollemne potuit effari” (Cicero De
domo sua 55.141); etc.
43
J. W. Dubois, “Self Evidence and Ritual Discourse,” in Evidentiality: The Linguistic
Coding of Epistemology, ed. Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986),
313–36; J. Leavitt, “Profezia,” in A. Duranti, Culture e discorso (Roma: Meltemi, 2001),
281–89.
44
M. Ahearn, “Agency,” in A. Duranti, Culture e discorso (Roma: Meltemi, 2001), 18–25.
204 Mythos/Fabula
one, as normally occurs: that of the present speaker, who de facto utters
the message, and that of the main speaker (the god or supernatural power),
who backs the utterance with a guarantee of authenticity. The specificity,
as well as the exceptionality, of the discourse defined as fari is due to just
this copresence of the two agencies. “I” may be speaking, but at the same
time, it is not “I” who speaks. It is this very ambivalence of the speaker—
the speaker and yet not the source—that lends the fari discourse its power
of persuasion (an authority?) that is on all counts exceptional.
Let us turn now to two examples that, at least at first glance, seem to lie
outside the boundaries that we have indicated are typical of fari. Actually,
we should realize that not only are these part of the sphere that we have
been trying to circumscribe up to now (that of the powerful, divine, and
effectual word), but above all, they allow us to identify a new sphere
of pertinence for the word designated as fari, which we shall define as
“social power.” We could even acknowledge that these two spheres of
fari—divine power and social power—tend to overlap in certain areas.
The first example that we must examine is made up of a singular, im-
personal form of our verb, and that is fando. This expression defines wide-
spread talk, hearsay, the story going around.45 Virgil’s Sinon, standing
before the Trojans who watch him suspiciously, addresses Priamus: “if it
has yet come to your ears [fando . . . si forte tuas pervenit ad auris] the
name of Belides Palamedes.”46 This expression also has a corresponding
negative side. “I’ve never heard tell [ne fando quidem auditum] of an
Egyptian who has profaned an ibis, a crocodile or a cat,” says Cicero’s
Velleius.47 The sphere of fando, of that which one has heard tell, corre-
sponds with what we today would define generically as “communication.”
In a culture where the standard means of communication was oral, in
contrast both to modern means and to print, “telling” meant the distribu-
tion of stories and news that made up shared information—with one im-
portant qualification, however. If one can say “I’ve never heard tell of ”
(ne fando quidem auditum), it also means something that is not possible,
or at least that is difficult to believe, as seen in the case of the Egyptian
with the ibis, crocodile, and cat.
This social dimension of fari—that which one has or has not heard tell
of, the word going around—brings us to the second example to be taken
into consideration. This is the noun fama, a term of notable importance
in Roman culture. Festus had no doubts:48 “fama a fando dicta, sic apud
45
Cicero De Natura Deorum 1.82; Arthur Stanley Pease, Marci Tulli Ciceronis de natura
deorum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), 1:413–14.
46
Virgil Aeneis 2.81ff.
47
Cicero De Natura Deorum 1.82ff.
48
Festus, Sexti Pompei Festi, 76.
Graecos pheme apo tes phaseos.” We all know the mythological, or better
yet, allegorical descriptions that Virgil and Ovid dedicated to Fama, the
goddess representing the word going around, gossip, and rumors. “There is
no faster evil” than Fama, or rather the “enormous, horrendous monster,
who has as many vigilant eyes on her body as she has feathers (incredible
as it may seem) and under these, just as many tongues, just as many res-
onating mouths, and just as many pricked up ears.”49 Her house soars “upon
the top of a peak. There she has built countless passages and thousands
of doorways but no doors lock at the threshold: it remains open day and
night, and is all of resonating bronze, quivering and echoing with every
voice that it perceives.”50 Fama is therefore a terrible creature. As is
known, Hesiod wisely advised fearing its unbounded power, admonishing
that “even phéme (the Greek correspondent to the Latin fama) is in some
ways divine.”51 Hence, the story that is going around is fearsome; it is all
the more powerful for the speed at which it spreads and for the devas-
tating effects it can produce. This does not mean, however, that fama is
exclusively scathing gossip. Yet again, the situation is a bit more compli-
cated than this. Indeed, Quintilian spoken about it in this way: “Famam
atque rumores pars altera consensum civitatis vel publicum testimonium
vocat, altera sermonem sine ullo certo auctore dispersum, cui malignitas
initium dedit incrementum credulitas. . . . Exempla utrimque non deerunt.”
(There are those who consider rumors and common talk [ fama] as a form
of consensus among citizens and public testimony; others, however, con-
sider it vague and unauthenticated talk, started by malice and developed
by credulity. There is no lack of examples for either.)52 Fama exists, then,
as a characteristically ambivalent “story.” On the one hand, its shared and
general nature forms a guarantee of reliability (“if everyone thinks that
way, then . . .”), and on the other, in the absence of a source, of a nameable
auctor who personally assumes responsibility, the statement is untrust-
worthy and discredited. As Virgil says, fama is “tam pravi fictique tenax,
quam nuntia veri” (the public word is the ambassador of truth but, at the
same time, it “carries” falsehoods and slander).53 There is no doubt that
fama is a statement that is highly powerful and effectual in daily social
life. Fama is capable of expressing the consensus of the citizens about a
certain topic, the public version of a particular piece of news or belief.
As such, this “statement” has the power to sway the opinions of the com-
munity with respect to particular events, even as far as determining their
final course.
49
Virgil Aeneis 4.173ff.
50
Ovid Metamorphoses 12.39ff.
51
Hesiod, Hesiodi Opera, 760ff.
52
Quintilian Institutio oratoria 5.3.
53
Virgil Aeneis 4.188.
206 Mythos/Fabula
The fact that in Latin the “story that’s going around” has been in-
corporated into the same linguistic sphere in which we find prophetic
revelation, or even destiny, makes fari a point of extreme interest for us,
above all from an anthropological standpoint. It is noteworthy that the
same phenomenon can be verified in the Greek culture. Indeed, the Greek
phéme, phésis, or phátis (terms that correspond linguistically with the
Latin fama) indicate both “public perspective” and “oracle,” or rather the
divine word.54 Even for the Greeks, the social power and the divine power
of a statement tend to overlap. At this point the medieval motto “Vox
populi, vox dei” almost inevitably comes to mind,55 but accepting this
comparison at face value may get us into a bind. The word of the people
is not “the word of god” simply in the sense that there is divine will
within the latter. Nor does it mean identifying fama or phéme only with the
word omen or kledonismós, and “involuntary” word that is nevertheless
replete with meaning and, as such, manifests the presence of a superhuman
speaker. I believe that the relationship between these two “words”—public
and divine, fama and fari—is actually much more subtle.
The vox populi is the vox dei because it imposes its will with over-
whelming power. Just like the word of god, the vox populi is out of dis-
cussion; just like fatum, fas, and prophetic fari, fama—the word or
perspective of the public—is also ineluctable in the end. It has the ability
to determine specific events or behaviors, as well as general customs. If
the fama/goddess of the epic has the power to “set into motion and shake
the city with her tongue,” even the most everyday fama in Terence is not
comparatively less effective.56 If Chremes offered his own daughter’s
hand in marriage (with a sizable dowry) to Simon’s son, the impetus came
once again from the fama (fama impulsus): “everyone,” explains Simon,
“in a single voice said such good things about him, and praised my for-
tunes, because I had a son who was gifted with such an extraordinary
temperament.”57
Obviously, Greek culture already offered quite explicit examples with
regard to the power contained in public perspective. Take, for example,
the explanation that Plato gave as the reason why certain acts, such as
incest, are unanimously considered obscene and impious: it is because
everyone “talks about it” and because of this, each one of us, from the
moment of birth, “has heard tell of it” in the very same way. Therefore, it
is the way in which “everyone talks” of certain behaviors—the unanimous
public perspective—that determines the perception of social judgment,
54
Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue Grecque (Paris: Klinsieck,
1968).
55
Renzo Tosi, Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche (Milano: Rizzoli, 1991), 1.
56
Valerius Flaccus Argonautics 2.122.
57
Terentius, Comoediae, ed. K. Dziatzko (Leipzig: Teubner, 1884), 94ff.
thereby determining the customs of the community. “Fama” (phéme), Plato

continues, “wields a stupefying power [thaumasté . . . dúnamis], if it is true
that no one in any way would dare to even breathe in a way that is not per-
mitted by law.”58 Therefore, fama determines social customs in accordance
with its incredible power. Public perspective is capable of imposing its
will on varying opinions and crushing them. This is why ancient cultures
likened its powers to that of the divine word. It is the social strength behind
public perspective—its role as the norm of credibility or acceptability, as
the consensus of the community—that in ancient cultures allowed it to
assume features of religious power. Turning once again to Hesiod, if “even
talk is in some ways divine,” it is because, like the gods, speech expresses
herself through a (socially) irresistible word.
Having arrived thus far, we can turn to the schematization that we used
above with regard to prophetic and religious fari. We defined these as
pronouncements with two concurrent speakers—the present speaker and
the main speaker—or rather as the simultaneous work of two different
agencies, of which the second is the more powerful and authoritative.
This feature of ambiguous duplicity—one speaker who is simultaneously
himself and other than himself—is the very aspect that makes the fari
discourse exceptional and is the basis for its persuasiveness. The same,
we may note, is true for fama. Indeed, even public perspective provides
for the concurrence of a present speaker, the one who bears the “news”
in question, and a main speaker—“everyone,” the community, whose
consensus is expressed through the fama. In this case as well, the second
agency represents the voice of authority for the present speaker. The
double-sided ambiguity of the locution defined as fama lies in the fact
that it is uttered by one who speaks simultaneously as himself alone and
as another, an individual and “everyone,” the community. This defines
the exceptionality of the discourse/fama, and establishes the basis for its
persuasiveness. In the case of the fama, in the word going around, a social
agency has taken the place of the supernatural agency who interceded in
the discourse of the prophet or priest. But the result is still the same.
fabula, misery, and greatness

Following this quick overview of the linguistic family of fari, we can
return to the problem from whence we began, the meaning of fabula, a
term that equally reconnects to the sphere of fari. As we have seen,
fabula often denotes a discredited discourse (chitchat, gossip, the story
58
Homer Odyssey 8.6.838d. See also Odyssey bk. 14, 235–39 (chalepé . . . démou phémis);
Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 938–39; etc. See Marcel Detienne, “Even Talk Is in Some Ways
Divine,” in The Writing of Orpheus: Greek Myth in Cultural Context, trans. Janet Lloyd
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 70–80.
208 Mythos/Fabula
going around, idle talk, and so on). Evidently, we are once again in the
same sphere where fama operates, when public opinion proceeds without
benefit of a reliable auctor and as such can easily be refuted. As we have
seen, however, fama also possesses simultaneously an extraordinary power
and an unexpected authority, as happens with any kind of locution that
belongs in the sphere of fari. The same can be said with regard to fabula.
Because the story going around is devoid of a definite auctor, fabula in-
evitably takes on the meaning of a discredited discourse. But considering
it as a locution like fari with a double agency, fabula carves out a niche
for itself of paradoxical authority. The story of Romulus and Remus is a
tall tale, highly unbelievable, interwoven as it is with supernatural and
legendary elements, so much so that Livy defines it as fabula; and yet it
nevertheless represents the story of the origins of Rome. In the same way,
while unbelievable and often unacceptable (fabulae), the stories of Greek
mythology still make up the theology upon which both religious traditions,
including the Roman one, and many rituals are based. Just as fama does.
Moreover, fabula can paradoxically convey both the unbelievable words
of a present speaker and the powerful words of a main speaker. From
behind the discredited speech of the fabula comes a second voice, draw-
ing its authority from the existence of a tradition that, one way or another,
backs its utterances. If in the case of fama the main speaker’s authority is
based on the strength of the community—“everybody says so”—in the
case of fabula it is based on the strength both of the past and of the tra-
dition: “everybody has always said so.” All the ambivalence evoked by
the word fabula—if you prefer, its misery and greatness—lies in the play
between its two voices: the present and the past, current talk and estab-
lished tradition.
“if i did not believe it, just as they do not believe the
wise men . . .”
By the time we encounter fabula, in the sense of “mythological account,”
the term—together with narratio, historia, and argumentum—has already
been imprisoned within the cages of rhetorical definition. In the first
century BCE, both Cicero59 and the Rhetoric to Herennius60 proposed an
outline destined to have a great impact on the development of a rhetori-
cal theory of narration.61 Cicero explains, “the narratio is the exposition
of that which has happened, or that which may have happened . . . it is
divided into three parts: fabula, historia, argumentum. Fabula is an
59
Cicero De inventione 1.19–27.
60
Cicero De inventione 1.8–12ff.
61
Rispoli, Lo spazio del verisimile, 22f., 170ff.; Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’antiquité
grecque, 34; Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula, 59–60.
account that contains neither truths nor verisimilitudes, like, ‘enormous,

winged dragons, yoked to a car.’ Historia, on the other hand, is the fact
that has actually happened, albeit far from the memory of our own time,
like, ‘War was declared on the Carthaginians by Appius.’ Argumentum
then is a fictional narrative that nevertheless could have occurred, as in
Terence’s, ‘For after he had come out of adolescence . . .’.”
Fabula is in good company. It is flanked by two terms that are equally
important. The first, historia—from Herodotus to Aristotle—was meant,
of course, to stand for “history,” with all its valences and ambivalence.62
The other, argumentum, plays an important role in the rhetorical system-
ization of the Romans, and here indicates the story line or the plot of a
theatrical text.63 Placed under the control of the story, on the one hand,
and plausibility on the other, fabula extends into the space of mythos in-
tended as unreliable discourse. Indeed, it denotes a story that is about “that
which is neither true nor plausible,” usually, a story that others can believe
in, but certainly not the person who thusly defines it. Cicero’s chosen ex-
amples are perfect. Fabula would be carried by the tragic poet Pacuvius,
who in his great, unfurling style describes the most improbable mytho-
logical animals; historia would be represented by one of the most “his-
toric” and prosaic verses ever composed by Ennius; and argumentum
could be exemplified by a quote from “Andria” by Terence, a quite ordinary
and plausible play. Cicero’s arrangement will be taken up later by Isidore
of Seville,64 and through his work, will be brought into the Middle Ages.
In his paraphrases of Cicero, Isidore attributes to historia not only “that
which has happened” but directly “that which is true,” whereas fabula in-
cludes “that which is against nature.” An unreliable discourse, that which
others believe, becomes no less than a statement that is against nature.
Cicero does not say this, but neither does Isidore come up with it all by
himself.
Augustine, in criticizing Varro, draws on his theological tripartition:65
“according to him there are three types of theology: mythica, physica and
civilis.” After this he continues: “if Latin usage permitted, the type that
Varro puts first we could call fabularis, but it is better to call it fabulosus:
indeed, the term mythicos comes from fables, as in Greek fabula is called
mythos.” Augustine thereby clarifies once and for all that the Latin fabula
is synonymous with mythos. As such, fabulosus (and not fabularis, which
he does not like) is synonymous with “mythic.” Varro, regardless, was quite
62
Rispoli, Lo spazio del verisimile, 57ff.
63
Maurizio Bettini, “Argumentum,” in Le orecchie di Hermes (Torino: Einaudi, 2000),
294–311.
64
Isodorus Etymologiae 1.44.
65
Augustine De civitate dei 6.5; Varro, fragment 7–10, M. Terentius Varro Antiquitates
rerum divinarum, ed. B. Cardauns (Weisbaden: Steiner, 1976).
210 Mythos/Fabula
honest. In Augustine’s transcription, to which we owe the survival of at

least this part of Antiquititates divinae, the great Reatinus continues on to
say, “we call mythicos the genre that is mostly used by the poets. . . . In
it there is much which is contrary to the dignity and the nature of the im-
mortals. There is, in fact, a god born out of a head (Athena), another from
the thigh (Dionysus), and a third from a drop of blood (Venus); and then
there are gods who steal (Hermes), who commit adultery (Zeus), and
who have served a man (Apollo and Admetus). In sum, there are things
which are attributed to the gods that not only seem to resemble human
characteristics, but also represent the worst that there is in man.” This is
the reasoning behind Isidore’s idea to define stories of fabula as being
“against nature.” The bishop of Seville had read Varro in his Augustine.
The problem had been posed to the Greeks themselves at least since
the sixth century BCE. During the descent into the underworld, Pythagoras
saw the soul of Hesiod tied to a bronze column, crying out, while Homer’s,
surrounded by snakes, was hanging from a tree. This torment—a true
apotympanismos, the punishment that the Greeks reserved for thieves and
worse offenders—is the fate of the two poets as punishment “for what
they said about the gods.”66 More or less in the same period, Xenophanes
expressly reprimanded Hesiod and Homer because “they attributed to the
gods all of the actions that mankind considered shameful and reprehens-
ible, like stealing, adultery, and mutual deception.”67 Therefore, not only
Christians but also pagans found the mythological accounts of the gods
unacceptable. Augustine, the Christian, found this aspect of fabulae to be
a welcome demonstration of the falsity of pagan gods. “How can one ask
for life eternal from this kind of divinity?” he later asked ironically. But
irony of this type could be conceded only to those who held that their
own theology was not mythic—those who had no difficulty in thinking
that mythoi were simply the stories that others believed. But for Varro, as
was true for many other pagan thinkers before him, this aspect of mythical
theology was a difficult obstacle to overcome—and, at the very least, com-
pelled them to think and rethink. For modern “mythologists”68 and ancient
mythologists alike, reflecting upon myth originates from a “scandal.”
Varro had, of course, tried to reduce its importance by distinguishing
three different levels of his theology. If the theologia mythica is so em-
barrassing, there was also the level of the theologia physica, “about
which many philosophers have written . . . who the gods are, where, of
what origin and nature, if they were born at a certain moment or if they
66
Diogenes Laertius Vitae philosophorum 8.1.21.
67
Fragments 11–12, Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker; see Jean Pepin,
Mythe et Allégorie: Les origines grecques et les contestations judéo-chrétiennes (Aubier:
Éditions Montaignes, 1958), 93–94; Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker, 103– 4.
68
Detienne, L’invention de la mythologie, 12ff.
are eternal.” And then there is civilis theology, “the one that the citizens
and priests of the city must know and administrate. It tells us which gods
are to be publicly worshipped, what ceremonies and what sacrifices are
appropriate for each one.” But Augustine quickly reworked these distinc-
tions: “in the theater,” he observed, “one does not mock the gods that are
not among those worshipped in the temples; nor are those to whom you
dedicate theater pieces different from those to whom you sacrifice your
victims.”69
Augustine touched on a sore point. And Varro, as we have seen, was not
the first to have to deal with being of an unbecoming theologia mythica.
A statement not unlike this one was also applied to mythical accounts
that spoke, not of gods, but of heroes, and the various fantastic creatures
that they encountered in their stories. These were full of incredible or bi-
zarre elements. “Do you believe, o Socrates, that the mythologema of
Boreas and Oreithyia are true?” Phaedrus asks in a renowned passage from
Plato’s homonymous dialogue. “If I did not believe it,” answers the phi-
losopher, “just as they do not believe the wise men, it wouldn’t be ex-
traordinary.” After which, Socrates proposes his “sage” (sophizomenos)
interpretation of the myth of Oreithyia, who was stolen away by Boreas,
saying that perhaps she had simply fallen from a rock when pushed by
“the wind of Boreas,” and from this grew the story of her abduction
by the god. Right afterward, however, Socrates declares that he had no
intention of spending his time “straightening out the image of the Hyp-
pocentaurs and the Chimera,” not to mention the profusions of Gorgons,
Pegasus, and other bizarre monsters of their kind.70 The reason was the
following: those who are motivated by incredulity to dedicate themselves
to bringing some “plausibility” to these tales, and to this purpose using
some “rough wisdom,” will in the end have spent all their time on this
activity alone. Socrates, on the other hand, wished to dedicate himself to
reflecting on himself, which is why, as far as mythology was concerned,
he preferred to “keep to tradition.”
Therefore, stories about the gods seemed “unbecoming,” just as stories
about heroes seemed “unbelievable.” Mythoi and fabulae present them-
selves as a problem from the moment when the traditional stories—or
rather those that are composed according to their model—seem to have
been reconsidered from the point of view of their acceptability or credi-
bility, in other words, when the question, “Can I too believe in this story
as the others do?” is asked. At this point, if we were to continue in our
discussion we would most certainly need to mention the strategies that
have, over the course of centuries, been put to work to maintain mythoi
69
Augustine De civitate dei 6.5.
70
Plato Phaedrus 229–30.
212 Mythos/Fabula
and fabulae within the realm of credibility and acceptability, those

theories devised to reaffirm the presence of a main speaker, a second and
major agency hiding behind the discredited words of all the mythoi or the
fabulae handed down by the tradition. First of all would be allegory,
which attempted to defeat the “ridiculous” or “unbecoming” aspect of
mythical accounts and to have them refer to things more noble and sub-
lime than their wrapper would have us suspect. Then there is euhemer-
ism, that reduces stories dominated by fantasy to a simple “human” and
plausible content—but still the solid second agency of factual history.
Finally, there is “do-gooder” rationalism, whose efforts are aimed at
maintaining the substance of the plot while depriving it of its more em-
barrassing and bizarre aspects. In sum, we should have to speak about the
various ways our culture has busied itself over the centuries, to reclaim
myth—no longer as the story that the others believe, but the story that we
ourselves can believe.
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Mythos/Fabula: Authoritative and Discredited Speech

Author(s): Maurizio Bettini

Before entering the fascinating world of Roman fabula—the main focus

mythos the reliable

ç 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

“deceptive” ( skolios ) needs to be added as well. 2 The unreliability of

declares, “sometimes the utterances [phatis] of mortals go beyond truth:

proofs.”18 If someone wants to believe in a particular mythos or fabula

the ambiguities of the fabula

One Line Long

philosopher must keep his distance, according to Cicero’s Balbus.28 Livy,

the powers of fari

thereby determining the customs of the community. “Fama” (phéme), Plato

fabula, misery, and greatness

account that contains neither truths nor verisimilitudes, like, ‘enormous,

honest. In Augustine’s transcription, to which we owe the survival of at

and fabulae within the realm of credibility and acceptability, those

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