The Burning Maze

For the ancients, mythology and history were two ways of remembering important lessons about the world. In his Poetics, Aristotle explains that the difference between mythology and history transcends issues of meter versus prose. He argues that if the works of historian Herodotus were rendered in meter, he would still be “learning by inquiry,” which is the meaning of the Greek word historia—the origin of the English word history. Similarly, the word poetry also comes from the Greek word poiesis, which gradually came to be associated with poetry, the art of metered language, but initially referred to works of craft more broadly—weaving, songs, pottery, and others—all of which could depict mythological narratives.

The meaning of the words highlights the difference that Aristotle describes between “history,” which recounts past events, and ‘poetry,’ which conveys mythic narratives. Aristotle believes that history and mythology offer different kinds of knowledge; the first deals in factual events, while the second delves into eternal truths. He contends that both must be remembered because both convey essential knowledge; history conveys knowledge of the past, and poetry conveys knowledge of past, present, and future potential.

By drawing on Greek and Roman mythology and history alike, Riordan draws on this Aristotelian difference to develop the