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In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, the Muses (, ) were the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric poetry, and that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture.
The number and names of the Muses differed by region, but from the Classical Greece the number of Muses was standardized to nine, and their names were generally given as Calliope, Clio, Polyhymnia, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Erato, Melpomene, Thalia, and Urania.Grimal, s.v. Muses.
In modern figurative usage, a muse is a person who serves as someone's source of artistic inspiration.
In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus cited Homer and Hesiod to the contrary, observing:
Diodorus states (Book I.18) that Osiris first recruited the nine Muses, along with the , while passing through Aethiopia, before embarking on a tour of all Asia and Europe, teaching the arts of cultivation wherever he went.
According to Hesiod's account (), generally followed by the writers of antiquity, the Nine Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (i.e., "Memory" personified), figuring as personifications of knowledge and the arts, especially poetry, literature, dance and music.
The Roman scholar Varro (116–27 BC) relates that there are only three Muses: one born from the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is embodied only in the human voice. They were called Melete or "Practice", Mneme or "Memory" and Aoide or "Song". The Quaestiones Convivales of Plutarch (46–120 AD) also report three ancient Muses (9.I4.2–4).See also the Italian article on this writer.Susan Scheinberg, in reporting other Hellenic maiden triads in "The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes", references Diodorus, Plutarch and Pausanias - Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 83 (1979:1–28), p. 2.
However, the classical understanding of the Muses tripled their triad and established a set of nine goddesses, who embody the arts and inspire creation with their graces through remembered and improvised song and mime, writing, traditional music, and dance. It was not until Hellenistic times that the following systematic set of functions became associated with them, and even then some variation persisted both in their names and in their attributes:
According to Pausanias, who wrote in the later second century AD, there were originally three Muses, worshipped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia: Aoide ('song' or 'tune'), Melete ('practice' or 'occasion'), and Mneme ('memory').Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.29.1–9.29.2 Together, these three form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice.
In Delphi too three Muses were worshipped, but with other names: Nete, Mese, and Hypate, which are assigned as the names of the three chords of the ancient musical instrument, the lyre.Plutarch Symposium 9.14
Alternatively, later they were called Cephisso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis - names which characterize them as daughters of Apollo.Eumelus fr. 35 as cited from John Tzetzes on Hesiod, 23; Tzetzes on Hesiod, Works and Days 6
A later tradition recognized a set of four Muses: Thelxinoë, Aoide, Archē, and Melete, said to be daughters of Zeus and Plusia or of Ouranos.Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3.53, Epicharmis, Tzetzes on Hes. 23 One of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father (by a nymph, called Antiope by Cicero) of a total of seven Muses, called italic=no (Νειλώ), italic=no (Τριτώνη), italic=no (Ἀσωπώ), italic=no (Ἑπτάπορα), Achelōís, italic=no (Τιποπλώ), and italic=no (Ῥοδία).Epicharmis, Tzetzes on Hes. 23Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Musae" .
For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the early deities Ouranos and Gaia. Gaia is Mother goddess, an Mother Nature who was worshipped at Delphi from prehistoric times, long before the site was rededicated to Apollo, possibly indicating a transfer to association with him after that time.
Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water , associated with the springs of Mount Helicon and with Pieris. It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the Muses, also known as pegasides, were born.Ovid, Heroides 15.27: "the daughters of Pegasus" in the English translation; Propertius, Poems 3.1.19: "Pegasid Muses" in the English translation. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the Muses (compare the Roman inspiring nymphs of springs, the Camenae, the Völva of Norse mythology and also the apsaras in the mythology of classical India).
Classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousēgetēs ('Apollo Muse-leader').For example, Plato, Laws 653d. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas. They also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them in Leivithra. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest. They won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability.
According to a myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses—alluding to the connection of Pieria with the Muses—Pierus, king of Macedon, had nine daughters he named after the nine Muses, believing that their skills were a great match to the Muses. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, the Pierides, being turned into chattering for their presumption.Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.677–78: "Now their previous eloquence also remained in the birds, as well as their strident chattering and their great zeal for speaking." See also Antoninus Liberalis 9.
Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses; the first are the daughters of Ouranos and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia (the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares), which contradicts the myth in which they were dancing at the wedding of Harmonia and Cadmus.
Linus was saidPseudo-Apollodorus. Bibliotheca 1.3.2 to have been the son of Apollo and one of the Muses, either Calliope or Terpsichore or Urania. Rhesus was the son of Strymon and Calliope or Euterpe.
The sirens were the children of Achelous and Melpomene or Terpsichore. Kleopheme was the daughter of Erato and Malos. Hyacinth was the son of Clio, according to an unpopular account.Apollodorus, 1.3.3
Hymenaeus was assigned as Apollo's son by one of the muses, either Calliope, or Clio, or Terpsichore, or Urania. Corybantes were the children of Thalia and Apollo.Apollodorus, 1.3.4
| Calliope | Epic poetry | Wax tablet, Stylus, Lyre |
| Clio | History | , , Cornett, Laurel wreath |
| Polyhymnia | Mime | Veil, Grapes (referring to her as an agricultural goddess) |
| Euterpe | Flute | Aulos (an ancient Greek musical instrument like a double oboe), panpipes, laurel wreath |
| Terpsichore | Light verse and dance | Lyre, Plectrum |
| Erato | Greek lyric | Cithara (an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre family) |
| Melpomene | Greek tragedy | tragic mask, sword (or any kind of blade), club, buskins (boots) |
| Thalia | Comedy | Comic mask, Ivy wreath, Shepherd's crook |
| Urania | Astronomy (Christian poetry in later times) | Globe and compass |
Some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope.
In Renaissance and Neoclassicism art, the dissemination of such as Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1593 and many further editions) helped standardize the depiction of the Muses in sculpture and painting, so they could be distinguished by certain props. These props, or , became readily identifiable by the viewer, enabling one immediately to recognize the muse and the art with which she had become associated. Here again, Calliope (epic poetry) carries a writing tablet; Clio (history) carries a scroll and books; Euterpe (song and elegiac poetry) carries a double-pipe, the aulos; Erato (lyric poetry) is often seen with a lyre and a crown of roses; Melpomene (tragedy) is often seen with a tragic mask; Polyhymnia (sacred songs) is often seen with a pensive expression; Terpsichore (chorus dancing and choral song) is often seen dancing and carrying a lyre; Thalia (comedy) is often seen with a comic mask; and Urania (astronomy) carries a pair of compasses and the celestial globe.
The Muses, therefore, were both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike (whence the English term music) was just "one of the arts of the Muses". Others included science, geography, mathematics, philosophy, and especially art, drama, and inspiration. In the archaic period, before the widespread availability of books (scrolls), this included nearly all of learning. The first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, took the form of dactylic hexameters, as did many works of pre-Socratic philosophy. Both Plato and the Pythagoras explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike.Strabo 10.3.10. The Histories of Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, were divided by Alexandrian editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses.
For poet and "law-giver" Solon,Solon, fragment 13. the Muses were "the key to the good life"; since they brought both prosperity and friendship. Solon sought to perpetuate his political reforms by establishing recitations of his poetry—complete with invocations to his practical-minded Muses—by Athenian boys at festivals each year. He believed that the Muses would help inspire people to do their best.
Originally, the invocation of the Muse was an indication that the speaker was working inside the poetic tradition, according to the established formulas. For example:
These things declare to me from the beginning,ye Muses who dwell in the house of Olympus,
and tell me which of them first came to be.
— Hesiod (c. 700 BCE), Theogony (Hugh G. Evelyn-White translation, 2015)
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
- —Homer (c. 700 - 600 BCE), in Book I of Odyssey (Robert Fagles translation, 1996)
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate; What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;For what offence the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man; ...
- —Virgil (c. 29 - 19 BCE), in Book I of the Aeneid (John Dryden translation, 1697)
Besides Homer and Virgil, other famous works that included an invocation of the Muse are the first of the carmina by Catullus, Ovid's Metamorphoses and Amores, Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Canto II), Geoffrey Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde (Book II), Shakespeare's Henry V (Act 1, Prologue), his 38th sonnet, and John Milton Paradise Lost (openings of Books 1 and 7).
The Muses were venerated especially in Boeotia, in the Valley of the Muses near Mount Helicon, and in Delphi and the Parnassus, where Apollo became known as Mousēgetēs ('Muse-leader') after the sites were rededicated to his cult.
Often Muse-worship was associated with the hero-cults of poets: the tombs of Archilochus on Thasos and of Hesiod and Thamyris in Boeotia all played host to festivals in which poetic recitations accompanied sacrifices to the Muses. The Library of Alexandria and its circle of scholars formed around a mousaion (i.e., 'museum' or shrine of the Muses) close to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Many Enlightenment figures sought to re-establish a "Cult of the Muses" in the 18th century. A famous Freemasonry lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Les Neuf Soeurs ('The Nine Sisters', that is, the Nine Muses); Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Georges Danton, and other influential Enlightenment figures attended it. As a side-effect of this movement the word museum (originally, 'cult place of the Muses') came to refer to a place for the public display of knowledge.
Museia (Μούσεια) was a festival dedicated to Muses which was held every fifth year on the lower slopes of Mount Helicon in Boeotia. There was also another festival which was called Museia, which was celebrated in schools. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin, Ed., Museia
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