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Print of Clio, made in the 16th–17th century. Preserved in the Ghent University Library. [2]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 ...
In Hesiod's Theogony, kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses. Zeus , in the form of a mortal shepherd, slept together with Mnemosyne for nine consecutive nights, thus conceiving the nine Muses .
The poet declares that it is he, where we might have expected some king instead, upon whom the Muses have bestowed the two gifts of a scepter and an authoritative voice (Hesiod, Theogony 30–3), which are the visible signs of kingship. It is not that this gesture is meant to make Hesiod a king.
Hesiod and the Muse (1891), by Gustave Moreau. The poet is presented with a lyre , in contradiction to the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff. Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days , but there are also arguments against that ...
But when the Muses sang, heaven, the stars, the sea and rivers stood still, while Mount Helicon, beguiled by the pleasure of it all, swelled skywards tilI, by the will of Poseidon, Pegasus checked it by striking the summit with his hoof. Since these mortals had taken upon themselves to strive with goddesses, the Muses changed them into nine birds.
In the Homeric Hymn to Poseidon – generally dated to the seventh century, but a bit later than Hesiod's works – a brief invocation, the god is hailed as "Lord of Helicon". [6] In his Aitia, the third-century BC poet Callimachus recounts his dream in which he was young once more and conversed with the Muses on Helicon.
Hesiod refers to the horse's well on Helicon in his Theogony. [7] And after they have washed their tender skin in Permessus or Hippocrene or holy Olmeidus, they perform choral dances on highest Helicon, beautiful, lovely ones, and move nimbly with their feet. Petrarch refers to the fountain of Helicon in his epic poem Africa:
Cha's use of nine muses is derived from Hesiod, who first used them. But Cha's employment is a subversive revision because of her "feminist intervention and patriarchal order." The catalogue of nine muses Cha examines with nine women characters, vary widely from "Greek goddesses to a Korean shamanistic matriarch and from historical figures to ...