What's the difference between pathos and bathos?

It's a trick question, right? I'm really
trying to see if you know the name of the third of the Three Musketeers. O.
K., you didn't fall for it. Clearly the first word is about how to get
somewhere and the second, how to be clean when you arrive.

All right lexicographers, if you insist.
Pathos was an ancient Greek word. It's the arousal of pity or sadness,
typically in tragic drama.

Bathos also comes from the Greek and literally
means "deep." But it's not deep as in "deep thinker," but rather deep as in
the sub-basement of emotions. It's the emotion a soap opera might evoke.
Aiming for pathos, it's only pathetic, trite, insincere and overly
sentimental. What? Yeah, that's it. Stop whining, you're giving me a
headache.

LadyBeth, what a wonderful pair of words! And welcome aBoard!

Welcome, Lady Beth!
Two new posters in two days--I am in heaven!

Interestingly, while my AHD supports your definition of "bathos", it also says it means "an abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect; anticlimax." Have you seen it used that way?

What's the difference between pathos and bathos?
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Oh, silly woman, it's cause and effect. If you're pathetically stinky, you need a bathos!

BTW, welcome to the nuthouse!

Perhaps we should call her Lady Bath?

Kalleh says, "AHD ... also says it means 'an abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect; anticlimax.' Have you seen it used that way?"

That seems to be the original meaning. Apparently the word came into English in 1728 when Alexander Pope coined the word in his 'Treatise on the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry' (1728). He took his examples from the inferior poets of the day; thus, he mentions "the modest request of two absent lovers" in a then-contemporary poem, which read, "Ye Gods! annihilate but Space and Time,/ And make two lovers happy."

Pope drew "a torrent of abuse from every quill-driver and poetaster who had been in reality attacked or fancied himself ridiculed."

I was reading today about (curses!) the Boston Red Sox baseball team that hasn't won the World Series since 1918, and the article referred to the "Boston 'mythos' and pathos." I remembered this thread so thought I'd revive it. I haven't seen the word "mythos", though it is cited in 7 of Onelook's dictionaries. It is related to "myth", meaning, " pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture."

Have you seen "mythos" used before? Would it be used, for example, with cult behavior? What does it mean by "often symbolically"?