Page 7 - The Muses Nine

THE MUSES

1
USES WERE GODDESSES who presided over the arts and sciences
and inspired those who excelled in these pursuits. The concept was
Mso persuasive that even today an individual might refer in figurative
language to a personal muses as a source of his or her inspiration.

There were not always nine
Muses. Like so many ideas in
Greek mythology, their number
represented an evolution from earlier
times. Originally three Muses were
worshipped on Mount Helicon in
Boeotia; Melete, Mneme and Aoede,
referring to their characterisation
of medication, memory and song.
Their worship was said to have been
established by Otus and Ephialtes,
the so-called Aloeidae. Three Muses
were worshipped also at Sicyon,
but we have the name of only
one of them, Polymatheia. Again,
three were worshipped at Delphi;
their names corresponded with the
names of the three strings of the
lyre – Nete, Mese and Hypate. At
Delphi they were alternately called
Apollo statue at Stowe Gardens Cephisso, Apollonis and Borysthenis.

Four Muses were at one time recognised – Thelxinoe, Aoede, Arche and Melete –
two of the names having been used before. One of the persons associated with the
Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called
Neilo, Tritone, Asopo, Heptapora, Achelois, Tipoplo and Rhodia. At Athens, eight
Muses were recognised before nine became the standard number.
Not only their number but their parentage varied among the most ancient
writers. Most commonly they were called the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne,
but other parents named were Uranus and Gaea, Pierus and Antiope, Apollo, Zeus
and Plusia, Zeus and Moneta, Zeus and Minerva, or Aether and Gaea. Their
nurse was Eupheme and she brought them up with her son, Crotus.

1 Extracts from Women of Classical Mythology, A biographical dictionary. By Robert E Bell.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507977-9.