In Homer, mythos meant an authoritative public speech-act, not a symbolic or false story.

Evidence

Muthos in Homer, “is a speech-act indicating authority, performed at length, usually in public, with a full attention to every detail.” It never means a symbolic story that has to be deciphered— or for that matter, a false one. In the Odyssey, Odysseus praises poetry— asserting that it is truthful, that it affects the emotions of its audience, that it is able to reconcile differences—and he concludes his poetic narration by declaring that he has “recounted a mythos.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 112

Categorization

• DEFINE: Mythos originally designated authoritative public speech, not fiction or symbol — a useful corrective to the modern ‘myth as false story’ default.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader genealogy of how secular categories quietly redefined religious vocabulary.