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For other uses, see Mythology (disambiguation).
"Myth" and "Mythos" redirect here. For other uses, see Myth (disambiguation) and Mythos (disambiguation). For the Highlander: The Series character, see Methos.
Mythology is a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition of a group of people–their collection of stories they tell to explain nature, history, and customs[1]–or the study of such myths.[2]

As a collection of such stories, mythology is a vital feature of every culture. Various origins for myths have been proposed, ranging from personification of nature, personification of natural phenomena to truthful or hyperbolic accounts of historical events, to explanations of existing ritual. Although the term is complicated by its implicit condescension, mythologizing is not just an ancient or primitive practice, as shown by contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A culture's collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experience, behavioural models, and moral and practical lessons.

The study of myth dates back to antiquity. Rival classifications of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato's Phaedrus, and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers. Nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science (E. B. Tylor), a "disease of language" (Max Müller), or a misinterpretation of magical ritual (James Frazer).

Some recent approaches have rejected a conflict between the value of myth and rational thought, often viewing myths, rather than being merely inaccurate historical accounts, as expressions for understanding general psychological, cultural or societal truths.

The English term mythology predates the word myth by centuries.[5] It appeared in the 15th century,[7] borrowed from Middle French mythologie. The word mythology, "exposition of myths", comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythologia "legendary lore, a telling of mythic legends; a legend, story, tale," from μῦθος mythos "myth" and -λογία -logia "study."[8][9] Both terms translated the subject of Fulgentius's 5th-century Mythologiæ, which was concerned with the explication of Greek and Roman stories about their gods. Although the African author Fulgentius's conflation with the contemporary African saint Fulgentius is now questioned,[10] the Mythologiæ explicitly treated its subject matter as allegories requiring interpretation and not as true events.[11] (The word mythología [μυθολογία] appears in Plato but was a general term for "fiction" or "story-telling" of any kind,[9] combining mỹthos [μῦθος, "narrative, fiction"] and -logía [-λογία, "discourse, able to speak about"].[12]) From Lydgate until the 17th or 18th century, "mythology" was similarly used to mean a moral, a fable, an allegory, or a parable.[9] From its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs,[14] it has implied the falsehood of the stories being described; remaining associated with sacred tales of the Greeks and Romans, though, it came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other polytheistic cultures around the world.[9] The Greek loanword mythos[16] (pl. mythoi) and Latinate mythus[18] (pl. mythi) both appeared in English before the first attestation of myth in 1830.[21]

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