If before, we had examined the origins of the Arthurian boy band by mapping the family tree of Sir Gawain and his four brothers, in this entry we’ll look at their girl band counterpart. There’s no better place to start than the nine Muses in Greek mythology, the living incarnation of the Arts and Sciences (and K-Pop too, it seems).
Although the nine Muses are tight like any good sorority, they’re not especially keen on the “chicks before d*cks” bit, given how nearly half of them sleep with the god Apollo, who is also their first cousin (ew). To their credit, they consolidate the trope of #DivineSisterhoods: among their kin, we find the seven Pleiades who accompanied Artemis in the hunt, the three Hyades who made it rain, the three Hesperides who tended Hera’s orchard in the West. The fad later extends to humans: the nine Pierides or Emathides, and the Oagerides are all groups of sisters related to Orpheus, the most famous of the Muses’ descendants.
No good sorority is complete without a dance-off, and the Muses do this a-plenty. They hold art competitions after being challenged by the Pierides ―whom they turn into squawking birds― and by the singer Thamyris ―whose eyes they slash out―. Evocative of the weaving duel between Athena and Arachne, these goddesses have no patience for hubris, and hold firmly that the Arts are a divine gift which they can easily recall.
Most importantly, though, the Muses spawn a new generation of artists prominent in Greek Mythology: the singer Linus; his father, the musician Philomenon; the harpist Oeagrus; and his son, the musician and prophet Orpheus, the pinnacle of the Arts in Greek mythology, to whom we’ll dedicate the following entries of Applied Mythology.
As the daughters of Mnemosyne, ―the Greek personification of Memory― it is only fair that I share with you my mnemonic method for learning the names of all nine:
Pair them up. Comedy goes with Tragedy, Music with Dance, Lyric with Epic, and the two that are left over ―History and Hymns― both begin with “h”.
Name association. This is the one that works best for me: Thalia is for Comedy, like the Mexican actress who did tawdry telenovelas; Melpomene is for Tragedy, like the ‘bad apple’ (melan~ + poma) you’d throw at a performance that was tragically bad. Euterpe is for Music, like the sheet music you want to interpret; Terpsichore is for Dance, because you don’t want to look derpy or for it to feel like a chore. Erato is for Lyric poetry because the lyric can get erotic; Calliope is for Epic poetry, because you’d better call me if something epic is going on. Finally, Clio is for History, like the Renault Clio which I haven’t seen in the market for years; and Polyhymnia is for hymns because duh.
And that’s it.
Coming up next. We’ll dive into the myth of Orpheus and the trope of #TalkingHeads, and no, we’re not talking about David Byrne.
And a fun fact. The singer Thamyris ―whom you can find in our family tree― is said to be the first man to love another man in Greek mythology. Alas, his love for Hyacinth was unrequited, since the former chose to love the god Apollo instead (yes, the same one who slept with half of his Muse cousins) and who, as tragedy would have it, brutally murdered him with a discus by accident.