The most harrowing existential anxiety is that of death. It appears, especially when one is very close to the final exit, usually due to old age, often due to an incurable disease, and rarely due to a death sentence, as here in Phaedo. No matter how much we understand the inevitability of death, no matter how much we know that life will continue after us, the dissolution of a specific personality is the deepest source of human melancholy. Even in the cases of 'realistic' and 'down-to-earth' people, death is an arbitrary abbreviation, while for the more sensitive and contemplative, death is the greatest scandal, both moral and metaphysical: Why, since life was given to us, should death exist? Sometimes the knife cuts very deep. What force gave us something we consider exceptional and, before we have had our fill or before we despair, takes it away 'unreasonably' and yet inevitably. For the only certainty mortals have is the certainty of death - that's why we are called mortals... The rest are beliefs, myths, created to console and sometimes to intimidate. And it is noteworthy that this very certainty of death and the uncertainty about the supposed 'continuity' often strongly stirs our imagination and activates contemplation and philosophy, since life and death are equally mysterious... They gave Phaedo the subtitle 'about the soul', but in reality, this work is far from expressing the entirety of Plato's views on the soul. Indeed, basic views on the subject are not even touched upon in Phaedo. So if I were to limit myself to only presenting what is supported in this dialogue, I would give a completely fragmented, incomplete, and in many ways misleading picture, since the philosopher was constantly concerned with the nature, properties, and fate of the soul, and his related views continuously evolved, from the youthful Apology and Crito to the mature Timaeus and the elderly Laws. That is why I will expand on the entirety of Plato's work. I did not find it appropriate to conduct a meticulous paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the views presented in Phaedo, as all the essentials are presented in the work that follows. Furthermore, I decided to conduct a broad overview of the basic notions about the soul among the Greeks, starting from Homer, to make it clear where Plato drew from, with whom he agreed, in what he differed, and whom he refuted. However, after presenting almost the entirety of the beliefs about the soul as they appeared in ancient Greek culture, I will exercise strict criticism at the end. The reason I titled my work 'The Mythology of the Soul' will become clear, especially towards the end. [Excerpt from the prologue text]