The modern world is impoverished by its lack of myths. Our ancestors knew the power of myth and we neglect that power at our own peril. It was Aristotle who said that history tells us what has happened and that poetry tells us what can happen. Therein lies the distinction between Thusytides' history of the Greek Peloponnesian war and Homer's earlier epic poem the Iliad. A myth can transform the world with something more powerful than facts --an idea. Let us say then that what you hold in your hand is a myth.