Article: Muse

For other senses of this word, see Muse (disambiguation). For the English band, see Muse (band).

In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μουσαι, Mousai : from a root meaning 'mountain') are nine goddesses who embody the right evocation of myth, inspired through remembered and improvised song and traditional music and dances. They were water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and Pieris. They are sometimes called Pierides from their association with the spring of Pieres. The Olympian system set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetes.

According to Hesiod's Theogony, they are the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from Uranus and Gaia. Pausanias supports that there were two generations of Muses; the first being daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second from Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another rarer belief is that they are daughters of Harmonia (the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares) which contradicts with the myth in which they were dancing in the marriage of Harmonia and Cadmus.

Compare the Roman inspiring nymphs of springs, the Camenae.

Muses in myth

The Muses Clio, Euterpe and Thalia, by Eustache Le Sueur

According to Pausanias there were three original Muses: Aoide ("song", "voice"), Melete ("practice" or "occasion") and Mneme ("memory") (Paus. 9.29.1). Together, they form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshipped as well but with other names: Nete, Mesi and Hypate which are the names of the three chords of the ancient musical instrument lyre.

In later tradition, the fourth Muse, Arche, was also considered.

The canonical nine Muses are:

• Calliope (epic poetry)
• Euterpe (music/lyric poetry)
• Clio (history)
• Erato (lyrics/love poetry)
• Melpomene (tragedy)
• Polyhymnia (sacred poetry and geometry)
• Terpsichore (dancing)
• Thalia (comedy)
• Urania (astronomy and astrology)

The Muses dancing with Apollo, by Baldassare Peruzzi

Together, they form a complete picture of the subjects proper to poetic art in the archaic period. However, the association of specific muses with specific art forms is a later innovation.

In Roman, Renaissance and Neoclassical art, Muses depicted in sculptures or paintings are often distinguished by certain props or poses, as emblems. Euterpe (music) carries a flute; Calliope (epic poetry) carries a writing tablet; Clio (history) carries a scroll and books; Erato (muse poetry) is often seen with a lyre and a crown of roses; Melpomene (tragedy) is often seen with a tragic mask; Polyhymnia (sacred poetry) is often seen with a pensive expression; Terpsichore (dancing) is often seen dancing and carrying a lyre; Thalia (comedy) is often seen with a comic mask; and Urania (astronomy) carries a staff pointed at a celestial globe.

Function in society

Greek mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means "song" or "poem". In Pindar, to "carry a mousa" is "to sing a song". The word is probably derived from the Indo-European root *men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne, Latin Minerva, and English "mind", "mental" and "memory" (or alternatively from *mont- mountain, due to their residence on mount Helicon, which is less likely in meaning, but more likely linguistically).

The Muses were therefore both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike, whence "music"; was "the art of the Muses". In the archaic period, before the wide-spread availability of books, this included nearly all of learning: the first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, was set in dactylic hexameter, as were many works of pre-Socratic philosophy; both Plato and the Pythagoreans explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike (Strabo 10.3.10). Herodotus, whose primary medium of delivery was public recitation, named each one of the nine books of his Histories after a different Muse.

For poet and "law-giver" 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.

The Muses judged the contest between Apollo and Marsyas. They also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. They blinded Thamyris for his hubris in challenging them to a contest.

Function in literature

The muses are typically invoked at or near the beginning of an epic poem or classical Greek story. They have served as aids to an author, or as the true speaker; for which an author is only a mouthpiece. Originally, the invocation of the Muse was an indication that the speaker was working inside the poetic tradition, according to the established formulae. Five classic examples :

Homer, in Book I of "The Odyssey":

"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." (Robert Fagles translation, 1996)

Virgil, in Book I of "The Aeneid":

O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;

What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;

For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began

To persecute so brave, so just a man; [...]

(John Dryden translation, 1995)

Dante Alighieri, in Canto II of The Inferno:

O Muses, o high genius, aid me now!

O memory that noted what I saw,

Now shall your true nobility be seen!

John Milton, opening of Book 1 of Paradise Lost:

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, [...]

William Shakespeare, Act 1, Prologue of Henry V:

Chorus: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Cults of the Muses

When Pythagoras arrived at Croton, his first advice to the Crotoniates was to build a shrine of the Muses at the center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning.

Local cults of the Muses were often associated with springs or fountains. They were sometimes called Aganippids because of their association with a fountain called Aganippe. Other fountains, called Hippocrene and Pirene were also important to the Muses. The Muses were also occasionally referred to as "Corycides", or "Corycian nymphs" after a cave on Mount Parnassos, called the Corycian Cave.

The Muses were especially venerated in Boeotia, near Helicon, and in Delphi and the Parnassus, where Apollo became known as Mousagetes "Muse-leader".

Muse-worship was also often associated with the hero-cults of poets: the tombs of Archilochus on Thasos and Hesiod and Thamyris (whom they blinded) in Boeotia, all played host to festivals, in which poetic recitations were accompanied by sacrifices to the Muses.

The Library of Alexandria and its circle of scholars were formed around a mousaion ("museum" or shrine of the Muses) close by the tomb of Alexander the Great.

Many Enlightenment figures sought to re-establish a "Cult of the Muses" in the 18th century. A famous Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Neuf Soeurs,see also: Les Neuf Soeurs ("nine sisters", i.e. nine Muses), and was attended by Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Danton and other influential Enlightenment figures. One side-effect of this movement was the use of the word "museum" (originally, "cult place of the Muses") to refer to a place for the public display of knowledge.

The concept of the Muse-poet

The British poet, Robert Graves, popularised the concept of the Muse-poet in modern times based on earlier traditions of the Celtic poets (pre 12th century), the medieval Troubadours who celebrated the concept of "courtly love" and the romantic poets.

"No Muse-poet grows conscious of the Muse except by experience of a woman in whom the Goddess is to some degree resident; just as no Apollonian poet can perform his proper function unless he lives under a monarchy or a quasi-monarchy. A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse...

But the real, perpetually obsessed Muse-poet distinguishes between the Goddess as manifest in the supreme power, glory, wisdom and love of woman, and the individual woman whom the Goddess may make her instrument...

The Goddess abides; and perhaps he will again have knowledge of her through his experience of another woman...

— Robert Graves (The White Goddess, A historical grammar of poetic myth.)

Miscellaneous

10th Muse references

• The poet Sappho of Lesbos was paid the compliment of being called "the tenth Muse" by Plato.
• Gabriele D'Annunzio's 1920 Constitution for the Free State of Fiume was based around the 9 muses, and invoked Energeia (energy) as "the tenth Muse".
• The 2000 comic book series The Tenth Muse posits a modern-day daughter of Zeus.

Other references

• The word muse may be used figuratively, to denote someone who inspires an artist.
• St. Augustine writes on the origin of the Legend of the Nine Muses in Book 2 of his work "On Christian Doctrine" in Chapter 17, and elaborates on a refutation by Varro.
• In New Orleans, nine streets are named after the Muses.
• The muses appear as co-narrators of the Disney movie Hercules and its spin-off series.
• Muses feature in the graphic novel The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.
• The Muses feature prominently in the musical film Xanadu starring Olivia Newton-John (as Terpsichore), Gene Kelly and Michael Beck; directed by Robert Greenwald.
• 14-year-old boy treble Neil Pritchard acts as a muse to a young composer in Ronald Frame's novel The Lantern Bearers.

Calliope	Clio	Erato	Euterpe, left, with Urania
Melpomene	Polyhymnia	Terpsichore	Thalia
Urania

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