Musings on Muses

Hey guys, RJ here. Decided to write a post myself, seeing as Megan's been doing all the talking around here. While Meg has been telling stories about heroes and gods, I'm probably going to be sticking to monsters and deities. Is that a little more difficult? Yes. Is it still going to be fun? Yes. So here it is: An Intro to the Muses.

The Muses were nine women who were said to literally be inspiration. Not the goddesses of inspiration, but inspiration itself. The Muses were not only the source of human knowledge, but the lifeblood of art. Each Muse had a specific art form attributed to them. For example, Polyhymnia was the inspiration for choral songs (the word hymn derives from her name), Thalia the Muse of comedy (I find it ironic that Rick Riordan named a punk, cold daughter of Zeus after the goddess of comedy), and Terpsichore (love that name) had domain over dance.

The word 'muse' in the English language means to meditate upon or to think about reflectively. Alternately, it can be to comment on something thoughtfully, something you see a lot on blog descriptions (musings on [topic] like ours). The most obvious example of the Muses' influence on our lingo is in 'music' one of the Greeks' favorite art forms. In fact, it's fitting that my all-time favorite band is the English
alternative rock band Muse.

The Muses are that little idea that you get while brainstorming, the spark of inspiration that could lead to anything from a novel to a scientific discovery. This itself says a lot about Greek culture. As Meg so eloquently put it, it shows the Greeks considered art so special and incredible that it could only be divinely inspired. The thing that really sets the Greeks apart from the Romans is the fact that they looked at culture in a much richer fashion, as a meeting ground between humanity and divinity. The Romans simply liked power, which I can respect, but what the Greeks valued is what makes me like them so much.

The Muses' power was not limited to the fine arts. Clio was the goddess of history, inspiring the great myth writers and historians to record events in the past and present. Urania was the goddess of astronomy. A little specific? Yes. But with her symbols a globe and compass, I'm going to hazard a guess that she had a hand in cartography, the art of making maps. She is always depicted looking toward the heavens, her name literally meaning 'heavens' and she can predict the future by the alignment of the stars. Yes, even horoscope writers have a Muse.

The Muses also represent human knowledge. In a way they are one of the most prominent bridges between the gods and the Earth, aside from demigods. They leak knowledge from the divine to the human, and kindle in them a passion to share it with the world. They are a bit like Prometheus bringing fire to the human race, but a little more... legal. Being divine themselves, they understand how much the human race can and can't handle.

For reference, here are short summaries of each of the nine Muses' functions and symbols.

Calliope
Occupation: Muse of epic poetry
Emblem: Writing tablet
Bio: Calliope, meaning "beautiful voice," was the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Being the Muse of epic poetry, and was said to be Homer's Muse, inspiring the Iliad and the Odyssey. Her sons were Linus, the inventor of melody and rythmn, and Orpheus, the great musician, and one of the few heroes ever to escape the Underworld. Calliope is considered to be the wisest of the Muses.

Clio
Occupation: Muse of history
Emblem: Scrolls
Bio: Clio, meaning "recount" or "make famous," is the inspiration of historians. Like historians, Clio was not famous herself, but was rather the one making others famous.

Erato
Occupation: Muse of love poetry
Emblem: Cithara (similar to a lyre)
Bio: Erato, meaning "desired" or "lovely," was the muse of love poetry and, as the name suggests, erotic poetry. According to one legend, her supposed tomb on the island of Samos was a pilgrimage site for star-crossed lovers.

Euterpe
Occupation: Muse of song
Emblem: Aulos (similar to a flute)
Bio: Euterpe, meaning "rejoicing" or "bringer of delight," was given the role of the Muse of Music. She was also accredited to lyric poetry in Classical times, making her one of the biggest outlets of creative energy today.

Melpomene
Occupation: Muse of tragedy
Emblem: Tragic mask (the frowny one in the theatre symbol)
Bio: Melpomene, meaning "melodious," is known best to be the Muse of tragic theatre, though was originally the Muse of singing, hence the name. Her realm is the inspiration on the dark half of theatre, her counterpart being Thalia, Muse of comic theatre. It was customary to invoke her favor at the beginning of a tragic play.

Polyhymnia
Occupation: Muse of hymns
Emblem: Veil
Bio: Polyhymnia, meaning "many hymns," was is a pensive Muse whose mysterious power was of sacred literature and hymn. Polyhymnia is a character sometimes used in popular culture. A fun fact is that Madeline L'Engle named her fictional character Polly O'Keefe loosely after the Muse Polyhymnia.

Terpsichore
Occupation: Muse of Dance
Emblem: Lyre
Bio: Terpsichore, meaning "delight in dancing," is the Muse of dance and dramatic chorus. She is depicted playing background music with a lyre for a chorus, and is the mother of the Sirens in some myths.

Thalia
Occupation: Muse of comic theatre
Emblem: Comic mask (the smiley one)
Bio: Thalia, meaning "to flourish," is the Muse of comedy. A common Muse nowadays, Thalia is portrayed wearing a crown of ivy and holding an actor's trumpet, which was used to amplify actors' voices.

Urania
Occupation: Muse of Astronomy
Emblem: Globe and Compass
Bio: (see above section on Urania)



As you can see, the Greeks emphasized art in the fullest, with many songs and poems asking for the help of the Muses in their lyrics or their verse. If the gods really have moved with the West, nowadays' Muses are in movies, art, architecture, and music (though I don't think Justin Beiber got the proper intercession. Poor guy.)

See ya guys later, hope you liked my first attempt at describing myths to you. Have good summers,
RJ

My Big Fat Greek Dictionary

In the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, much of the humor is derived from the father of the bride, whose pride in his Greek heritage is borderline fanatical. I don't know how accurate or inaccurate the film's portrayal of modern Greek culture is, but I do know that when the father insists that he can take any word and prove that its root is Greek, he's got a point.

English a curious language in that it's not really a language of one people so much as a composite of hundreds of other languages. Much of it is derived from Latin, but I'd say we owe at least a third of our words to Greece--sometimes specifically Greek mythology.

For instance, I already talked about the Narcissus and Echo myth, which gave us two common English words. Atlas, a word we use to refer to a large map, was the name of a Titan who was condemned to hold the entire world on his shoulders (hence the connection to geography). As my dear brother already mentioned, the nine Muses gave us the verb "muse" and of course the noun "music." The more common spelling of Kronos is "Cronus," from which we derive the words "chronology" and "chronological," which refer to the order of events, since Cronus had powers over time. From the love-god Eros, we get the word "erotic." Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, became the word for the colored part of the eye.

Here's a weird one: our English word "hermaphrodite" comes from the myth of Hermaphroditus, a son of Hermes. A young woman fell desperately in love with him, but he was pretty lukewarm towards her, so she clung to him and begged Aphrodite that she would never be seperated from him. Unfortunately, the gods granted her wish a little too literally, and they became one entity.

Nemesis was the goddess of retribution--sometimes interpreted as a goddess of revenge, and other times of justice, depending on your opinion--but now the word has come to mean a person that one regards as a rival or enemy.

Our words "panic" and "pandemonium" are references to the god of the wild, Pan, who had the power to create chaos with his call.

Stoicism was a Greek philosophy, a school of thought, but now it's mostly come to mean remaining fairly emotionless or showing little emotion. Hedonism was a philosophy that promoted the pursuit of pleasure, so when people say "hedonistic" now, they mean superficial and pleasure-seeking.

Ironically, the word "dyslexia" is also Greek, so Percy Jackson really does have Ancient Greece to blame for his learning disorders, haha.

Another weird one--"automaton" was the name of the mechanical giants that Hephaestus the blacksmith made, so the Ancient Greeks predicted robots.

A lot of prefixes and suffixes that we add to words are Greek, too--like "-opolis" means city (such as the word "metropolis"), and "-ocracy" or "-archy" means the word refers to a form of government or society ("aristocracy," "democracy," "oligarchy," "anarchy").

Some other words we owe to the Greeks: apostrophe, apathy, lethargy, academy, tragic, epiphany, orthodox, mathematics, agnostic, hygiene, myriad, dogma, diagnosis, semantics, character, didactic, irony, metaphor, cynical, protagonist, and angel.

Whew. And that's hardly a comprehensive list, it's just a basic overview of some common ones. If you want to spot any more words with Greek origins, anything with a "ph" instead of an "f" is probably Greek, and anything with the suffix "'-ology" is Greek for "study of..." The prefixes "mono-" ("one"), "a-" ("none") and "poly-" ("many") are also Greek: monotheist, polytheist, atheist, amoral, asexual, asymmetical, polygon, polygamy, and monogamy, just to name a few.

 Interestingly, one can notice that the kinds of words we adopted from them tend to be things we associate with Ancient Greece--learning, science, literature, theater, politics, and religion. Chances are, half the words you'll use in literature class will be Greek--synonym, antonym, homonym, syntax, diction, etc.

So, are there any other words or phrases with their origins in Greek mythology or language that I am forgetting? If you have anything else to add, I'd love to hear them.

One final thought for the day--I'd like to close with another My Big Fat Greek Wedding quote: "There are only two kinds of people in the world--those who are Greek, and everybody else who wishes they were Greek."

Hope everyone's having a lovely July, and to all my American readers, I hope you had a lovely Independence Day.
~Meg