Introduction

Abstract

Here I define the parameters of the two concepts at the heart of this study—that of the nature of “myth,” a term denoting neither a truth nor falsehood but a sophisticated societal representation—and the meaning of the concept of a Roman “decline and fall”—both historiographically and in terms of its later cultural value. The latter lies at the heart of this study, and I seek to define it here in the context of the sociology of representation. I focus here in particular on the writings on Lévi-Strauss on myth, and Hayden White’s interpretation of “metahistory.”