The inspired speech of myth
begotten of the Daimon
reveals that the world
is the theater
of the periodic revolution of soul.

                                       

 

"I would like to point out that in the works of Plato such as we have them, in dialogue form—and not as the interpreters try to reconstruct them in the form of a system—it is the mythic language of "representation" (to use the Hegelian vocabulary) that is at the origin of the theoretical language of "speculation." Logos is capable of elaborating a theory of knowledge at the conclusion of dialectal conversation only after mythos has oriented the philosophy with a knowledge of theory. The latter engenders the natural movement of the soul that enables it to see the theaters of ideas.
 

"[...] Platonic myth may thus be roughly defined as a tale of various episodes reported by the voice of the narrator only...which tries to reveal *in iconic form* the initial truth of the world. The synoptic function of the myth whose circular structure duplicates that of the cosmos enables it to integrate in one vision the manifold experiences acquired by men through contact with things. As in a theater the representation of the invisible takes shape and puts rhythm into space. At the center of the enclosure built on a hill and opened to the outer world, the drama that holds together the lives of men with the lives of gods, as well as the forces of heaven with those of the earth, enacts the meeting point of all the perspectives to which it communicates its primal unity."

 The Theater of Myth in Plato     Jean-Francois Matte'i,
in PLATONIC WRITINGS, PLATONIC READINGS, ed. Charles Griswold