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48-467: Nine Muses may refer to: The nine Muses of Greek mythology Nine Muses (band) , a South Korean girl group The Nine Muses , an elegiac volume of poetry published in 1700 Nine letters written by Aeschines Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Nine Muses . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

96-677: 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 Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Les Neuf Soeurs ('The Nine Sisters', that is, the Nine Muses); Voltaire , Benjamin Franklin , Danton , and other influential Enlightenment figures attended it. As

144-408: A Pre-Greek origin is also possible. The earliest known records of the Muses come from Boeotia (Boeotian muses). Some ancient authorities regarded the Muses as of Thracian origin. In Thrace, a tradition of three original Muses persisted. In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus cited Homer and Hesiod to the contrary, observing: Writers similarly disagree also concerning the number of

192-403: 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 poetry) is often seen with a pensive expression; Terpsichore (choral dance and 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

240-572: A set of four Muses: Thelxinoë , Aoide , Archē , and Melete , said to be daughters of Zeus and Plusia or of Ouranos . One of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus . By some he was called the father (by a Pimpleian nymph, called Antiope by Cicero ) of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ ( Νειλώ ), Tritṓnē ( Τριτώνη ), Asōpṓ ( Ἀσωπώ ), Heptápora ( Ἑπτάπορα ), Achelōís, Tipoplṓ ( Τιποπλώ ), and Rhodía ( Ῥοδία ). According to Hesiod 's Theogony (seventh century BC), they were daughters of Zeus , king of

288-408: 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. Mnemosyne In Greek mythology and ancient Greek religion , Mnemosyne ( / n ɪ ˈ m ɒ z ɪ n iː , n ɪ ˈ m ɒ s ɪ n iː / ; Ancient Greek : Μνημοσύνη , pronounced [mnɛːmosýːnɛː] ) is the goddess of memory and

336-420: 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 . Calliope had two sons, Ialemus and Orpheus , with Apollo . In another version of the story, the father of Orpheus was Oeagrus , but Apollo adopted him and taught him the skill of lyre while Calliope trained him in singing. Linus

384-596: The Iliad and the Odyssey , among others—as the speaker called upon her aid in accurately remembering and performing the poem they were about to recite. Mnemosyne is thought to have been given the distinction of "Titan" because memory was so important and basic to the oral culture of the Greeks that they deemed her one of the essential building blocks of civilization in their creation myth . Later, once written literature overtook

432-475: The Classical period 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 . In modern figurative usage, a muse is a person who serves as someone's source of artistic inspiration . The word Muses ( Ancient Greek : Μοῦσαι , romanized :  Moûsai ) perhaps came from

480-534: The Muses and Memory " (emphasis added). Aristophanes also harked back to the tradition in his play Lysistrata when a drunken Spartan ambassador invokes her name while prancing around pretending to be a bard from times of yore. While not one of the most popular divinities, Mnemosyne was the subject of some minor worship in Ancient Greece. Statues of her are mentioned in the sanctuaries of other gods, and she

528-537: 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

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576-472: The o-grade of the Proto-Indo-European root * men- (the basic meaning of which is 'put in mind' in verb formations with transitive function and 'have in mind' in those with intransitive function), or from root * men- ('to tower, mountain') since all the most important cult-centres of the Muses were on mountains or hills. R. S. P. Beekes rejects the latter etymology and suggests that

624-617: The transmigration of the soul . Although she was categorized as one of the Titans in the Theogony , Mnemosyne did not quite fit that distinction. Titans were hardly worshiped in Ancient Greece , and were thought of as so archaic as to belong to the ancient past. They resembled historical figures more than anything else. Mnemosyne, on the other hand, traditionally appeared in the first few lines of many oral epic poems   —she appears in both

672-493: The Classical names and attributes of the standard list of the nine Muses, as well as their various associated symbols: Some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore , Helike , Eunike, Thelxinoë , Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia , and Enope. In Renaissance and Neoclassical art, the dissemination of emblem books such as Cesare Ripa 's Iconologia (1593 and many further editions) helped standardize

720-538: The Mousai (Muses) and to call the mountain sacred to the Mousai were, they say, Ephialtes and Otos (Otus), who also founded Askra ... The sons of Aloeus held that the Mousai were three in number, and gave them the names Melete (Practice), Mneme (Memory), and Aoide (Aeode, Song). But they say that afterwards Pieros (Pierus), a Makedonian (Macedonian) ... came to Thespiae [in Boiotia] and established nine Mousai, changing their names to

768-556: The Muses as "Corycides" (or "Corycian nymphs ") after a cave on Mount Parnassos , called the Corycian Cave . Pausanias referred to the Muses by the surnames "Ardalides" or "Ardaliotides", because of a sanctuary to them at Troezen said to have been built by the mythical Ardalus . The Muses were venerated especially in Boeotia , in the Valley of the Muses near Helicon , and in Delphi and

816-419: The Muses; for some say that there are three, and others that there are nine, but the number nine has prevailed since it rests upon the authority of the most distinguished men, such as Homer and Hesiod and others like them. Diodorus states (Book I.18) that Osiris first recruited the nine Muses, along with the satyrs , while passing through Aethiopia , before embarking on a tour of all Asia and Europe, teaching

864-600: 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'). Together, these three form

912-493: The arts of cultivation wherever he went. According to Hesiod's account ( c.  600 BC ), 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

960-594: The beginning of their work. It asks for help or inspiration from the Muses, or simply invites the Muse to sing directly through the author. 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

1008-547: The building where he lodged before with Tykhe (Tyche, Fortune) and the Daimon Agathon (Good Spirit). Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him. Mnemosyne was also sometime regarded as being not the mother of the Muses but as one of them, and as such she was worshiped in the sanctuary of the Muses at Mount Helicon in Boeotia: The first to sacrifice on Helikon (Helicon) to

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1056-517: The celestial globe. The Greek word mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means 'art' or 'poetry'. According to Pindar , to "carry a mousa " is 'to excel in the arts'. The word derives from the Indo-European root * men- , which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne and mania , English mind , mental and monitor , Sanskrit mantra and Avestan Mazda . The Muses, therefore, were both

1104-400: The center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning. Local cults of the Muses often became associated with springs or with fountains. The Muses themselves were sometimes called Aganippids because of their association with a fountain called Aganippe . Other fountains, Hippocrene and Pirene , were also important locations associated with the Muses. Some sources occasionally referred to

1152-447: 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 . Alternatively, later they were called Cephisso , Apollonis , and Borysthenis - names which characterize them as daughters of Apollo . A later tradition recognized

1200-469: The cult incorporated a multitude of other Greek heroes and gods in its process of healing. The exact order of the offerings and prayers varied by location, and the supplicant often made an offering to Mnemosyne. After making an offering to Asclepius himself, in some locations, one last prayer was said to Mnemosyne as the supplicant moved to the holiest portion of the Asclepeion to incubate . The hope

1248-507: 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

1296-415: The depiction of the Muses in sculpture and painting, so they could be distinguished by certain props. These props, or emblems , 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

1344-470: 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

1392-463: The first of the carmina by Catullus , Ovid 's Metamorphoses and Amores , Dante 's Inferno (Canto II), Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (Book II), Shakespeare's Henry V (Act 1, Prologue), his 38th sonnet , and Milton's Paradise Lost (openings of Books 1 and 7). When Pythagoras arrived at Croton , his first advice to the Crotoniates was to build a shrine to the Muses at

1440-473: The form of dactylic hexameters , as did many works of pre-Socratic philosophy. Both Plato and the Pythagoreans explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike . 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 , the Muses were "the key to

1488-486: The gods, and Mnemosyne , Titan goddess of memory. Hesiod in Theogony narrates that the Muses brought to people forgetfulness, that is, the forgetfulness of pain and the cessation of obligations. For Alcman and Mimnermus , they were even more primordial , springing from the early deities Ouranos and Gaia . Gaia is Mother Earth , an early mother goddess who was worshipped at Delphi from prehistoric times, long before

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1536-482: 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. Ancient authors and some later authors and artists invoke Muses when writing poetry, hymns or epic history. Ancient authors invocations often occur near

1584-545: 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'). In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas . They also gathered the pieces of

1632-418: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nine_Muses&oldid=928752934 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Muse The number and names of the Muses differed by region, but from

1680-457: The man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. 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; [...] Besides Homer and Virgil, other famous works that included an invocation of the Muse are

1728-474: The mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus . In the Greek tradition, Mnemosyne is one of the Titans , the twelve divine children of the earth-goddess Gaia and the sky-god Uranus . The term Mnemosyne is derived from the same source as the word mnemonic , that being the Greek word mnēmē , which means "remembrance, memory". A Titaness , Mnemosyne is the daughter of Uranus and Gaia . Mnemosyne became

1776-472: The mother of the nine Muses , fathered by her nephew, Zeus : Hyginus in his Fabulae gives Mnemosyne a different parentage, where she was the daughter of Zeus and Clymene . In Hesiod 's Theogony , kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses. Zeus , in the form of a mortal shepherd, slept together with Mnemosyne for nine consecutive nights, thus conceiving

1824-432: 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). However, the classical understanding of the Muses tripled their triad and established a set of nine goddesses, who embody

1872-524: The muses, either Calliope, or Clio, or Terpsichore, or Urania. Corybantes were the children of Thalia and Apollo. The Muses had several temples and shrines in ancient Greece, their two main cult centres being Mount Helikon in Boiotia, which holds the Valley of the Muses , and Pieria in Makedonia. Strabo wrote: The cult of the Muses was also commonly connected to that of Apollo. The following table lists

1920-506: The nine Muses . Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in Hades , a counterpart to the river Lethe , according to a series of 4th-century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in dactylic hexameter . Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated . In Orphism , the initiated were taught to instead drink from the Mnemosyne, the river of memory, which would stop

1968-509: 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 jays (with κίσσα often erroneously translated as ' magpies ') for their presumption. 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

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2016-433: The oracular sanctuary of Trophonios : [Part of the rituals at the oracle of Trophonios (Trophonius) at Lebadeia, Boiotia (Boeotia):] He [the supplicant] is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. Here he must drink water called the water of Lethe (Forgetfulness), that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water,

2064-400: The oral recitation of epics, Plato made reference in his Euthydemus to the older tradition of invoking Mnemosyne. The character Socrates prepares to recount a story and says "ὥστ᾽ ἔγωγε, καθάπερ οἱ (275d) ποιηταί, δέομαι ἀρχόμενος τῆς διηγήσεως Μούσας τε καὶ Μνημοσύνην ἐπικαλεῖσθαι." which translates to "Consequently, like the poets, I must needs begin my narrative with an invocation of

2112-444: The present ones ... Mimnermos [epic poet C7th B.C.] ... says in the preface that the elder Mousai (Muses) are the daughters of Ouranos (Uranus), and that there are other and younger Mousai, children of Zeus. Mnemosyne was one of the deities worshiped in the cult of Asclepius that formed in Ancient Greece around the 5th century BC. Asclepius , a Greek hero and god of medicine , was said to have been able to cure maladies, and

2160-440: 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 nymphs , associated with the springs of 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. Athena later tamed

2208-551: The water of Mnemosyne (Memory), which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent ... After his ascent from [the oracle of] Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the chair of Mnemosyne (Memory), which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralysed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to

2256-683: Was often depicted alongside her daughters the Muses. She was also worshipped in Lebadeia in Boeotia , at Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and in the cult of Asclepius . There was a statue of Mnemosyne in the shrine of Dionysos at Athens, alongside the statues of the Muses, Zeus and Apollo, as well as a statue with her daughters the Muses in the Temple of Athena Alea . Pausanias described the worship of Mnemosyne in Lebadeia in Boeotia, where she played an important part in

2304-408: Was said 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. Hymenaeus was assigned as Apollo's son by one of

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