Musical Musings

“Musa, mihi causas memora….”—“Recall to me, Muse…,” sings the Roman poet
Vergil, early in the Aeneid, his epic about the Greek-Trojan War and subsequent
founding of Rome. Muses were behind the pens of all the classical writers of Greece and
Rome, and were invoked by later writers too. My own Muse-in-residence suggested
recently that any half-baked scribbler ought to acknowledge them. And so bidden, I
hereby obey.
The Nine Muses were the creatures of the ancient Greeks, and the Romans
borrowed them, just as they purloined so much of the Greek culture. The Muses were the
daughters of the ruler of Olympus, Zeus (Jupiter or Jove to the Romans), and
Mnemosyne (NEM-oh-seen), whose name means Memory. Her name is meaningful in
several ways. Not only was she asked to jog the memories of writers, but she could help
bards and singers recall poems and songs in this age of few written documents. But most
especially, the poets sought out Mnemosyne’s daughters. Homer’s Iliad begins, “Sing,
Muse, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles…,” scourge of the Trojans. And his Odyssey,
the story of the wanderings of Odysseus after the sack of Troy, starts thus: “Tell me,
Muse, of the man of many ways, who wandered far….”
All the Muses were musical virtuosos, but each came to be assigned a function in
the general world of the arts:
• The specific Muse called upon by Vergil and Homer was Calliope, “Lovely
Voice.” Supreme among the Muses, her province was epic poetry.
• Enterpe was the inspiration for lyric poetry
• Polyhymnia dealt with sacred poetry and, as her name suggests, with hymns.
• Erato’s job description encompassed love poetry or erotic verse.
• Terpsichore was invoked for choral dance and song.
• Melpomene inspired poets of tragic dramatic verse.
• Thalia, on the other hand, focused on the comic.
• Clio was the Muse of historians.
• And Urania prevailed over astronomy.
Considering that these nymphs as a group were all celebrated for music and song, the last
two subjects—history and astronomy-- may seem out of place. The Greeks, however,
understood the arts in a broader sense than we do. Further, astronomers saw the heavens
peopled by figures—Orion, for instance the mighty hunter whom Zeus transferred to
the skies. History, to the ancients, was also spiritualized. They saw not literal facts like
dates on a calendar, but a history of a people interwoven with myth.
Mount Helikon in central Greece was sacred to the Muses. There they danced
around Hippokrene, “the horse’s spring,” created by Pegasus’ hooves. Drinking from
this spring brought poetic inspiration, as John Keats illustrates in Ode to a Nightingale:
“O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene.”
Nearby Mount Parnassus, with its Oracle at Delphi, was the haunt of the mighty Apollo.
The sacred mount was the seat of poetry and music, and the spiritual center of the
classical word. Naturally, the Muses sang and danced there as well, in the service of their
dean Apollo.

Like other classical words, the term muse lives today in various English words:
music, as you would expect, as well as museum, a home for the arts. I was surprised to
learn that the verbs to muse and to amuse came from quite another source: the Latin mus,
for snout or muzzle, and thence through the Italian musare, meaning to hold one’s snout
in the air like a dog or person trying to determine a scent. You’ll have to sniff the air
yourself awhile to see if you can track the trail from musare to our muse or amuse.
Word for the month

Mnemonic, mnemonics (nih-MAHN-ick), any sort of system to aid the memory. The
word derives from the name Mnemosyne, mother of the Nine Muses. A common
mnemonic aid is “Roy Gbiv” to help us recall the colors of the rainbow: red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. And should you have any trouble remembering
how to spell geography, just remember, “George Eastman’s old grandmother rode a pig
home yesterday.”