The Muses

The Muses were the Greek goddesses of poetic inspiration, of song, dance and memory, on whose favor the poet, the singer and the thinker depended. In Hesiod’s Theogony and in the tradition that followed him they are nine daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne, but older and local traditions knew only three.

Family and Dwelling Places

Hesiod says that the Muses were born in Pieria to Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory. Zeus lay with her for nine nights, and when a year had passed she bore nine daughters, “of one mind,” who care only for song (Hesiod, Theogony 52–62). Apollodorus gives the same parents and the same nine names (Library 1.3.1). Not every author agreed. Diodorus says that a few poets, among them Alcman, made the Muses daughters of Uranus and Gaea (Diodorus Siculus 4.7.1). According to the poet Mimnermus, as Pausanias reports him, the elder Muses were daughters of Uranus, and there were other, younger Muses, children of Zeus (Pausanias 9.29.4).

The Muses were called Olympian Muses (Hesiod, Theogony 25) and Pierian Muses after Pieria, the land at the foot of Mount Olympus where they were born. Hesiod places their dancing floor and their home near the highest peak of Olympus (Theogony 62–63). Mount Helicon in Boeotia was equally dear to them: the Theogony begins by calling them the Heliconian Muses, who dance around the spring and the altar of Zeus on the mountain (Theogony 1–8). It was there, Hesiod says, that they taught him his song while he was pasturing lambs, gave him a laurel staff, and breathed into him a divine voice (Theogony 22–34).

The poets asked for their help before they began. Hesiod says that singers and lyre-players come from the Muses and from Apollo, and that the man whom the Muses love is fortunate, for sweet speech flows from his mouth (Theogony 94–97).

Number, Names, Attributes, and Domains

The number of the Muses depended on the place. They are most often nine, the number given by Hesiod and by Homer, who speaks of “all nine Muses” singing at the funeral of Achilles (Odyssey 24.60). Earlier or local cults worshipped three.

The Three Muses

According to Plutarch, there were three Muses at Delphi, and the Delphians named them after the three strings of the lyre, Nete, Mese and Hypate (Plutarch, Table Talk 9.14.3). The Sicyonians also had three, one of whom they called Polymathia, “The One of Much Learning” (Plutarch, Table Talk 9.14.7). At Helicon, Pausanias writes, the sons of Aloeus, who founded the cult near Ascra, held that there were three Muses and named them Melete (“Practice”), Mneme (“Memory”) and Aoide (“Song”). He adds that Pierus, a Macedonian, later came to Thespiae, established nine Muses and gave them the names they bear today (Pausanias 9.29.2–3).

The Nine Muses

In the Theogony Hesiod names the nine: Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Urania and Calliope. Calliope, he says, is the foremost of them, since she attends on reverend kings (Theogony 77–80). Hesiod gives no separate office to each name. Later poets used the names to divide the arts among the nine, and the usual list of their domains and emblems comes from this later tradition rather than from Hesiod:

• Thalia (“The Cheerful One”), Muse of Comedy, shown with a comic mask or a shepherd’s crook;
• Urania (“The Heavenly One”), Muse of Astronomy, shown with a globe;
• Melpomene (“She Who Sings”), Muse of Tragedy, shown with a tragic mask or another emblem of tragedy;
• Polyhymnia (“She of the Many Hymns”), Muse of Hymns and sacred poetry, often shown thoughtful and veiled;
• Erato (“The Lovely One”), Muse of Lyric Poetry, usually shown with a lyre;
• Calliope (“The One with a Beautiful Voice”), Muse of Epic Poetry, shown with a writing tablet;
• Clio (“The Celebrator,” “The Proclaimer”), Muse of History, shown with a scroll;
• Euterpe (“She Who Pleases”), Muse of Flute-playing, shown with an aulos;
• Terpsichore (“The One Delighting in the Dance”), Muse of Choral Lyric and Dancing, shown dancing or with a lyre.

Plutarch’s Table Talk (9.14.7) records a dinner-table discussion of the same question. One speaker places Urania alone in the heavens and distributes the other eight Muses over human affairs, so that a figure of “eight Muses” also appears in ancient discussion. He gives Calliope, Clio and Thalia the serious side of life, and assigns Erato to marriages and Euterpe to the study of nature.

The Muses in Particular Myths

Other than as divine inspirers in the verses of the poets, the Muses appear rarely in myths; and when they do, they are as often punishers of rivals as singers at feasts.

Revelers

On Olympus the Muses sang in turn to the music of Apollo’s lyre at the feasts of the gods (Homer, Iliad 1.601–604). Hesiod too pictures them going to Olympus with beautiful voices to sing before their father Zeus (Theogony 36–52, 68–71). They also came down to earth for mortal occasions. All nine mourned Achilles, answering one another in lament (Homer, Odyssey 24.60–62), and Pindar says that Cadmus and Peleus were fortunate enough to hear the Muses sing at their weddings, the first at Thebes when he married Harmonia and the other on Mount Pelion (Pindar, Pythian 3.88–92; Nemean 5.22–25).

Avengers

The Muses punished anyone who challenged their skill. Homer tells how they met the Thracian bard Thamyris on his way from Oechalia. He had boasted that he would win even if the Muses themselves sang against him, and in anger they maimed him and took away both his divine song and his skill at the lyre (Iliad 2.594–600). Apollodorus says they took his sight and his minstrelsy (Library 1.3.3).

The blind Phaeacian singer Demodocus in the Odyssey is a gentler case. The Muse loved him and gave him both good and evil, taking away his eyes and giving him sweet song in return (Odyssey 8.62–64). It was not a punishment for a contest.

Pausanias reports that the daughters of Achelous, the Sirens, were persuaded by Hera to compete with the Muses in singing; the Muses won, plucked the Sirens’ feathers and made crowns of them for themselves (Pausanias 9.34.3). In Ovid’s Metamorphoses the nine daughters of Pierus, a rich man of the fields of Pella (Pausanias calls him a Macedonian), challenged the Muses to a song contest and lost; as they lashed out in anger, feathers grew from their arms, and they were changed into magpies, whose chatter is still noisy (Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.294–678).

The Sons of the Muses

Several mythical musicians were said to be sons of Muses. Orpheus is most often called the son of Calliope and the Thracian Oeagrus (Apollonius, Argonautica 1.23–25); Apollodorus adds that Calliope bore Linus to Oeagrus or, nominally, to Apollo (Library 1.3.2). Pausanias, however, denies that Calliope was Orpheus’ mother (9.30.4).

According to Apollodorus (Library 1.3.3–4), Clio fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes, and bore Hyacinthus; Euterpe bore Rhesus to the river Strymon, although some said his mother was Calliope; Thalia bore the Corybantes to Apollo; and Melpomene bore the Sirens to Achelous. Apollonius of Rhodes names Terpsichore, not Melpomene, as the mother of the Sirens (Argonautica 4.895–896).

The Muses Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 1–115 (the invocation of the Heliconian Muses, their birth, names and gifts); Homer, Iliad 1.601–604 and 2.594–600, Odyssey 8.62–64 and 24.60–62; Pindar, Pythian 3.86–92 and Nemean 5.22–25; Diodorus Siculus 4.7.1; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.23–25 and 4.895–896; Apollodorus, Library 1.3.1–4; Pausanias 9.29.1–4, 9.30.4 and 9.34.3; Plutarch, Table Talk 9.14.3 and 9.14.7; Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.294–678.

See Also: Mnemosyne, Sirens, Pierus, Orpheus, Apollo, Zeus, Thamyris