Muse
In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μουσαι, Mousai) are nine Greek goddesses of the arts and sciences. They were associated with the Roman Camenae.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.
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2 Muses in Myth 3 Cults of the Muses 4 The Classical Tradition |
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 widespread 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 lawgiver 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 every year.
The canonical nine Muses are:
The Muses judged the contest between Apollo and Marsyas. They also buried the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope and nephew of the other eight. They blinded Thamyris for his hubris in challenging them to a contest.
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 Mt. 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 festival in which poetic recitations were
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 popular Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Neuf Seurs ("nine sisters", i.e. nine Muses), and was attended by Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. 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 word muse is used figuratively to denote someone who inspires an artist.
Functions
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". Muses in Myth
According to Pausanias there were three original Muses: Aoide ("song", "voice"), Melete ("practice" or "occasion") and Mneme ("memory"). Together, they form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art.
Together, they form a complete picture of the subjects proper to poetic art in the archaic period.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.The Classical Tradition
The poet Sappho of Lesbos was also paid the very great compliment of being called "the tenth Muse".
Muse is also the name of a rock band.
The Three Muses was a restaurant in Minneapolis that operated from 2002-2003.