Barthes’ formulation of the symbiotic relationship of myth and history suggests a productive way for ancient historians to think about the role of myth in the historical endeavor. Rather than conceptualizing them as mutually exclusive categories, he shows how myth and history, each with its own discursive qualities and narrative goals, work together to help cultures learn about and legitimate their past. Moreover, his observations about the naturalizing force of myth take us full circle, back to the Aristotle passage with which we began. For both Aristotle and Barthes recognize that while history aims to tells us the particulars about “what really happened” (e. g. what Alkibiades did and had done to him), the universalizing voice of poetry (or myth), its ability to turn a particular historical reality “inside out,” aims at something very different, and should not be overlooked. What Barthes adds to Aristotle’s formulation is his valuable insight into the powerful relationship between these two kinds of discourses about the past. His thoughtful articulation of the ideological function of myth, its power to naturalize historical reality, provides the key to a productive historical analysis of myth. Failing to appreciate the underlying narrative patterns and cultural metaphors that structure these narratives can lead a historian either to take the narrative at face value, that is to miss the naturalizing force of myth, or to reject it all together. Both are big mistakes. Instead, the historian needs to bring the tools of literary and narrative analysis to bear upon these mythic narratives to read them productively as legitimate historical sources.
World History
