Developments in epistemology are philosophically interesting for two reasons. The first is simply that they are advancements in the analysis of a core set of conceptsknowledge, belief, truth, and reason. Getting clear about these things is important, just as we should be interested in getting clear about justice, the moral good, beauty, and meaning. These are concepts that reflective humans want to possess and use correctly. They are part of our normative lives, and so we do better when we are

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... ight about the concepts and their applications. The second reason why epistemology is philosophically interesting is that developments in our account of knowledge influence how we pursue our other philosophical accounts. So, one's story of why one is right about, say, justice (and how others may be wrong) is one that depends on one's account of what it is to be right about these concepts and how one can demonstrate that. Epistemology, then, is not only of first-order philosophical interest, but it is of concern for second-order philosophical reasons. Views on the nature of truth and the acquisition of knowledge bear on how one sees the breadth of philosophically relevant truths and the methods of one's competitors. This point about the two levels of philosophical import for epistemology is borne out in the way the transition from mythology to philosophy is discussed when demarcating the beginnings of the ancient philosophical traditions. The relevant transition from the complex of Hesiodic and Homeric poems to philosophical historia is posited on the contrast between reliance on testimony given about the gods or through those inspired by them and those who judge by reason and experience. Hesiod's Theogony opens with the poet relating how he met the nymphs who tell him the stories of the gods and have given him the ability to relate them accurately , and Homer's two epics open with an appeal to the goddess to speak through the poet, and, by extension, the rhapsode relating the poem (Il.