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
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
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.