C alliope (“The One with a Beautiful Voice”) was the Muse of Epic Poetry Hesiod claims that she was the foremost among the nine, since “she attends on worshipful princes” Calliope can often be seen holding a writing tablet.E rato (“The Lovely One”) was the Muse of Lyric Poetry naturally, she’s usually represented with a lyre.P olyhymnia (“She of the Many Hymns”) was the Muse of Hymns and sacred poetry, often depicted with a pensive look hidden behind a veil.M elpomene (“She Who Sings”) was the Muse of Tragedy, and she is either holding a tragic mask or some other symbol of tragedy (sword, club, buskins).U rania (“The Heavenly One”) was the Muse of Astronomy, and you can often see her holding a globe.T halia (“The Cheerful One”) was the Muse of Comedy and was often portrayed holding a comic mask or a shepherd’s crook.Later poets, however, used the Hesiodic names as a foundation for further differentiation, so they distributed the Muses among diverse realms, attaching to each of them different attributes and powers. The Greek epic poet gives a meaningful name to each of these nine Muses, but we don’t know whether he had intended a different office for all of them. In “The Theogony,” Hesiod tells us that there were nine Muses – and most authors, especially since Roman times, abide by his account. However, the names he cites for them – Melete (“Study”), Mneme (“Memory”), and Aoide (“Song”) – sound too modern to believe him. According to Plutarch, one of the Sicyonian Muses was called Polymatheia, or “The One of Much Learning.” Pausanias, a Greek geographer from the second century, claims that there were originally three Heliconian Muses as well. The Three MusesĪt both Delphi and Sicyon, there were no more than three Muses. However, they are most often either three (probably in earlier reports) or nine (following Hesiod and maybe Homer). There are various accounts of five, seven and even eight Muses. What is the Trojan Horse? Number, Names, Attributes, and Domainsĭepending on the region where they were celebrated, both the names and the number of Muses varied.Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. The reconstructed form *montwa, the ancestor of Greek Mousa, also comes from this root and probably originally referred to "mental power" that enables poets to craft verses-the Muses were the Greek poets' divinized conceptions of the faculties that help them to create and recite poetry. Greek mnēmosunē is derived from the root *mnā-, an extended form of the Greek and Indo-European root *men-, "to think." This is the root from which English also gets the words amnesia (from Greek), mental (from Latin), and mind (from Germanic).
#Muse of music professional#
Her name is simply the Greek noun mnēmosunē, "memory"-the faculty of memory was indeed the mother of invention for the ancient Greek professional poets and bards whose job it was to compose new poems in traditional styles on festive occasions, to recite the verses of Homer, and to improvise material whenever they had a memory lapse. As to the further origins of this form, a clue is provided by the name of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and mother of the Muses. In Greek dialects, this word is found in the variant forms mōsa and moisa, and together these indicate that the Greek word comes from an original *montwa. The word Muse comes from Latin Mūsa, which in turn is from Greek Mousa. Word History: Ever since Chaucer first mentions the Muses in a work from around 1390, English poets have invoked these goddesses like so many other versifiers since the days of Homer, who begins both The Iliad and The Odyssey with an invocation of his Muse.
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