![]() Thus the Athenians offered them sacrifices in the schools, while the Spartans did so before battle. They were also adored in many otherplaces in Greece. After the decline of Ascra, the inhabitants of Thespiae attended to the worship of the Muses and to the arrangements for the musical contests in their honour that took place once in five years. According to the general belief, the favourite haunts of the Muses were certain springs, near which temples and statues had been erected in their honour: Castalia, at the foot of Mount Parnassus, and Aganippe and Hippocrene, on Helicon, near the towns of Ascra and Thespiae. At both these places were their oldest sanctuaries. Thracian settlers, in the Pierian district at the foot of Olympus and of Helicon in Boeotia are usually mentioned as the original founders of this worship. MELETE (Meditation), MNEME (Remembrance), AOIDE (Song), whose worship was said to have been introduced by Aloidae, Otus and Ephialtes, near Mount Helicon. Three older Muses were sometimes distinguished from these. (9) URANIA (the heavenly), the Muse of astronomy with the celestial globe. (8) POLYMNIA or POLYHYMNIA (she that is rich in hymns), the Muse of serious sacred songs usually represented as veiled and pensive. (7) ERATO (the lovely one), the Muse of erotic poetry with a smaller lyre. (6) TERPSICHORE (she that rejoices in the dance), the Muse of dancing with the lyre. (5) MELPOMENE (she that sings), the Muse of tragedy with tragic mask, ivy wreath, and occasionally with attributes of individual heroes, e.g. (4) THALIA (she that flourishes), the Muse of comedy and bucolic poetry with the comic mask, the ivy wreath, and the shepherd's staff. (3) EUTERPE (she that gladdens), the Muse of lyric song with the double flute. ![]() (2) CLIO (she that extols), the Muse of history with a scroll. (1) CALLIOPE (she of the fair voice), in Hesiod the noblest of all, the Muse of epic song among her attributes are a wax tablet and a pencil. Hesiod calls them the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, born in Pieria, and mentions their names, to which we shall at the same time add the province and the attributes afterwards assigned to each ( see cuts). In Homer, who now speaks of one, and now of many Muses, but without specifying their number or their names, they are considered as goddesses dwelling in Olympus, who at the meals of the gods sing sweetly to the lyre of Apollo, inspire the poet and prompt his song. In Greek mythology originally the Nymphs of inspiring springs, then goddesses of song in general, afterwards the representatives of the various kinds of poetry, arts, and sciences. They are among the tenderest and most charming productions in the whole range of extant Greek literature, and afford some perception of the points of excellence ascribed to Sappho by antiquity: sincerity and depth of feeling, delicacy of rhythm, and grace and melodiousness of language. Her odes were for the most part composed in the metre named after her the sapphic strophe (or stanza), which was so much used by Horace. ![]() Two of her odes, with a number of short fragments, are still extant. Her poems were divided by the Alexander scholars into nine books according to their metres and besides the purely lyric songs, among which the Epithalamia, or wedding-lays, were particularly celebrated, they included elegies and epigrams. Equally unfounded is the legend emanating from the Attic comedians, that she threw herself from the Leucadian rock into the sea out of despair at the rejection of her love by a handsome seaman named Phaon. ( See ERINNA.) Although, according to the principles expressed in her own poems, and according to trustworthy testimonies of antiquity she was a woman of pure and strict life, yet later scandal unwarrantably put an immoral interpretation on this society. ![]() In her later years she was again living in Lesbos, in the society of young girls with an inspiration for poetry. About 596 she was obliged to flee from Lesbos, probably in consequence of political disturbances, and to remain some time in Sicily. She was married to a rich man of Andros, and had a daughter named Clais. The greatest poetess of antiquity, born at Mytilene or Eresus in Lesbos, lived between 630 and 570 B.C., being a younger contemporary of Alcaeus ( see cut). Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 ![]()
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