Muse

For other uses see Muse (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology, the Muses (Greek Μουσαι, Mousai) are nine archaic 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. The Olympian system set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetes.

Compare the Roman inspiring nymphs of springs, the Camenae.

Muses in myth

The canonical nine Muses are:

• Euterpe (music)
• Calliope (epic poetry)
• Clio (history)
• Erato (lyric poetry)
• Melpomene (tragedy)
• Polyhymnia (sacred poetry)
• Terpsichore (dancing)
• Thalia (comedy)
• Urania (astronomy)

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 (lyric 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

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 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

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)

Dante Alighieri, in Canto II of The Inferno:
:O Muses, o high genious, aid me now!
:O memory that noted what I saw,
:Now shall your true nobility be seen!

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 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 popular Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Neuf Soeurs ("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 classical tradition

The word muse is used figuratively to denote someone who inspires an artist.