Logos as composition

Abstract

This essay argues that the word logos meant “a gathering or composition “ in Homeric Greek and that it retained this sense through the fifth century BCE. It first builds a philological case for the composition/ gathering meaning of logos. Next, it addresses the historiographic question of how the interpretation of logos as logic/language has come to prevail in our histories of Greek thought. Finally, it demonstrates the relevance that the composition/gathering reading of logos can have for the history of rhetoric by showing how it can help in rethinking the “rivalry “ between muthos and logos.