Meet the Muses
Who the nine Muses were, their arts and symbols, and where their stories come from.
Who Were the Nine Muses? What Hesiod's Theogony Tells Us
Meet the nine Muses as Hesiod first described them: daughters of Zeus and Memory, their names, their gifts to poets and rulers, and where ancient versions disagree.
Read · 6 min read →Meet the MusesThe Nine Muses and Their Arts: Who Got What, and When
How each Muse came to be linked with an art, from Hesiod's shared song to Plato and an anonymous Latin poem, with a quick reference and the places sources disagree.
Read · 6 min read →Meet the MusesMnemosyne: Why Memory Is the Mother of the Muses
Who Mnemosyne was in Hesiod, why Greek poets made Memory the Muses' mother, and how memory appears at an oracle, on a gold tablet and in Plato.
Read · 5 min read →Meet the MusesMount Helicon and the Hippocrene: Where the Muses Lived
A guide to the Muses' places, from Helicon and its springs to Olympus and Pieria, with what Hesiod, Ovid and the traveler Pausanias say about each.
Read · 6 min read →Meet the MusesInvoking the Muse: How Homer and Hesiod Open Their Poems
How the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns call on the Muses, what each invocation claims, and four questions to ask of any invocation you read.
Read · 6 min read →Meet the MusesFrom Muses to Museums: Plato, Alexandria and a Word's Journey
How the Muses moved from poetry into philosophy, a royal community of scholars in Alexandria, Hellenistic and Roman art, and finally the English word museum.
Read · 5 min read →