These goddesses are so famous that I suppose everyone knows their epithets, their names and their surnames. They are said to preside, each one in particular, over different arts, such as music, poetry, dance, astronomy, etc. It is said that they are called Muses , from a Greek word meaning to explain mysteries , Μύειν, because they taught men very curious and important things, which are beyond the reach of the vulgar. Finally, some have gone so far as to imagine that each of their names enclosed a particular allegory, but Varro had more rational ideas about them. [1]

It is not Jupiter, he tells us, who is the father of the nine muses ; it is three sculptors from Sicyon. This village, wanting to put up three statues of the muses in the temple of Apollo, named three sculptors to make three statues each of the muses . It was proposed to take them from whichever of the sculptors best succeeded; but Sicyon bought the nine statues, and dedicated them to Apollo, because they were all nine of the greatest beauty. It then pleased Hesiod to give names to each of these statues.

However Diodorus attributes another origin to the muses . Osiris, he says, passionate enthusiast of song and dance, always had at his court a troupe of musicians, amongst whom stood out nine distinguished girls instructed in all of the arts that have some connection to music; the Greeks called them the nine muses .

M. le Clerc believes that the fable of the muses comes from the concerts that Jupiter had established on the island of Crete, and which were composed of nine singers; that this god only passed for the father of the muses because he was the first of the Greeks who had had a regularly held concert, and that they were given Mnemosyne as their mother, because it is memory which furnishes material for verses and poems.

In any case, this fiction of muses took great favor. It is said that they occupied themselves by singing the wonders of the gods on Olympus; and that they knew the past, the present, and the future. They were not only numbered amongst the goddesses, but all the honors of divinity were lavished upon them. They were offered sacrifices in several cities in Greece and Macedonia. In Athens, they had a magnificent altar, upon which there were often sacrifices. Mount Helicon in Boeotia was consecrated to them; and the Thespians each year celebrated a festival in their honor, in which there were prizes for the musicians. It was Pierus, who was so celebrated for his talents, and for those of his daughters, the Pierides, who founded the temple of the nine muses in Thespies. Rome also had two temples consecrated to the muses in the first region of the city, and a third where they were celebrated under the name Camenes . Furthermore, the muses and the graces usually shared the same temple. This intimate union between these two sorts of divinities is well known. There was hardly a pleasant meal that did not call upon them both together, and did not salute them with a wineglass in hand. Hesiod, after having said that the muses had established their abode on Helicon, added that Love and the Graces lived close by. Pindare confused their jurisdiction. Finally, no one honored them as much as the poets, who never fail to invoke them at the beginning of their poems as goddesses capable of inspiring that noble enthusiasm which is the foundation of their art. If they are to be believed, the nine scholarly girls once ordered the cities, governed the states, lived in the palaces of kings, and from a legitimate and common equality did everything that that Fortune does today .

Note

1. Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BCE – 27 BCE).