epimyth

plural epimyths

1. The moral of a story.

   The epimyth, coming after the fable, the moral.

   1881, William Fleming, Henry Calderwood, A Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences, page 664

   4 more examples

   [I]t is the Odyssean episode with a Christian epimyth.

   1934, Daniele Vare, The Quarterly Review, page 448

   In principle each fable in the collection is divided into two parts: the narrative itself, followed by an explicit moral or epimyth. ... In most of the fables the length of the epimyth ranges between six and twelve lines.

   1994, Reb Moshe Walich, Book of Fables: The Yiddish Fable Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich, Frankfurt Am Main, 1697, page 19

   [P]resumably the “man of education” did not reproduce the epimyth of the fable, which warns that one should always anticipate the result of one's actions.

   2000, Edward W. Wheatley, Mastering Aesop: medieval education, Chaucer and his followers, page 227

   [T]he first five fables follow a different sequence in the two texts, which causes a logical problem in the epimyth to fable no. 6 in Wallich's collection; and tale no. 35 from the earlier collection is omitted by Moses Wallich.

   2004, Jerold C. Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750: With Introduction and Commentary, page 750