Abstract
From Marcel Detienne's great book Les Maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque (1967), we have retained the image of a kind of " premier âge " of " pensée grecque ", during which aedists, diviners, " rois de justice " and other " sages "(sophoi) would have possessed and proclaimed to their contemporaries truths inspired by the gods. In a second time, and at the price of a " laïcisation " of knowledge, philosophy could have been born in the sense of both the search for (and no longer the possession of) the true, and the criticism of the doxa : myths, traditions, authorities, in a word, " conglomérat hérité ", to say it with Gilbert Murray.
What we'd like to show here is that this evolutionary schema is deceptive. The " truth masters " did not disappear with the transition to philosophy. Just think of Epicurus, a symbol of philosophical rationalism if ever there was one. And, symmetrically, the idea of research and examination is present from the very beginnings of Greek thought, in that it is in fact inherent to the very spirit of Greek polytheism.
