Muses

They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in ancient Greek culture.

The word Muses (Ancient Greek: Μοῦσαι, romanized: Moûsai) perhaps came from 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),[3] or from root *men- ('to tower, mountain') since all the most important cult-centres of the Muses were on mountains or hills.

[8]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 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 the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is embodied only in the human voice.

[9][10] However, the classical understanding of the Muses tripled their triad and established a set of nine goddesses, who embody 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').

[16][17] According to Hesiod's Theogony (seventh century BC), they were daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, Titan goddess of memory.

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.

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.

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.

[47] In Renaissance and Neoclassical art, the dissemination of emblem books such as Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1593 and many further editions) helped standardize the depiction of the Muses in sculpture and painting, so they could be distinguished by certain props.

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.

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.

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 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 the center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning.

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.

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.