Musaeus of Athens

Linus teaches the letters to Musaeus on the tondo of a kylix. Eretria Painter, circa 440/35 BC. Paris, Louvre.

Musaeus of Athens (Greek: Μουσαῖος, Mousaios) was a legendary polymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet, and musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Attica. He composed dedicatory and purificatory hymns and prose treatises, and oracular responses.

Life[edit]

A semimythological personage, to be classed with Olen, Orpheus, and Pamphus. He was regarded as the author of various poetical compositions, especially as connected with the mystic rites of Demeter at Eleusis, over which the legend represented him as presiding in the time of Heracles.[1]

He was reputed to belong to the family of the Eumolpidae, being the son of Eumolpus and Selene.[2] In other variations of the myth he was less definitely called a Thracian. According to Diodorus Siculus, Musaeus was the son of Orpheus,[3] and according to Tatian he was the disciple of Orpheus. Others made him the son of Antiphemus, or Antiophemus, and Helena.[4] Alexander Polyhistor, Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius say he was the teacher of Orpheus.

In Aristotle[5] a wife Deioce is given him; while in the elegiac poem of Hermesianax., quoted by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 597), Antiope is mentioned as his wife or mistress. The Suda gives him a son Eumolpus. The scholiast on Aristophanes mentions an inscription said to have been placed on the tomb of Musaeus at Phalerus. According to Diogenes Laërtius he died and was buried at Phalerum, with the epitaph: "Musaeus, to his sire Eumolpus dear, in Phalerean soil lies buried here." According to Pausanias, he was buried on the Mouseion Hill, south-west of the Acropolis,[6] where there was a statue dedicated to a Syrian.[7]

Attributed works[edit]

Herodotus reports that, during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, the scholar Onomacritus collected and arranged the oracles of Musaeus but inserted forgeries of his own devising, later detected by Lasus of Hermione.[8] The mystic and oracular verses and customs of Attica, especially of Eleusis, are connected with his name. A Titanomachia and Theogonia are also attributed to him by Gottfried Kinkel.[9]

We find the following poetical compositions, accounted as his among the ancients:--

  1. Χρησμοί - Χρησμοί, Oracles.[10] Onomacritus, in the time of the Peisistratidae, made it his business to collect and arrange the oracles that passed under the name of Musaeus, and was banished by Hipparchus for interpolating in the collection oracles of his own making.[11]
  2. . Precepts,[12] addressed to his son Eumolpus, and extending to the length of 4000 lines.[13]
  3. . A hymn to Demeter. This composition is set down by Pausanias[14] as the only genuine production of Musaeus extant in his day.
  4. . (Ancient Greek: Ἐξακέσεις νόσων[15]
  5. . Theogony.[16] (Diog. Laert. Prooem. 3).
  6. . Titanomachia [17][18]
  7. . Spharea [19][20] - What this sphaera was, is not clear.
  8. . Παραλύσεις, Τελεταὶ and Καθαρμοί.[21]

Aristotle also quote some verses of Musaeus in Book VIII of his Politics: "Song is to mortals of all things the sweetest." but without specifying from what work or collection.

Some have supposed the Musaeus who is spoken of as the author of the Theogony and Sphaera to be a different person front the old bard of that name. But there does not appear to be any evidence to support that view. The poem on the loves of Hero and Leander is by a very much later author.[22]

Legacy[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ (Diod. 4.25.)
  2. ^ (Philochor. apud Schol. ad Arist. Ran. 1065; Diog. Laert. Prooem. 3.)
  3. ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.25.1–2.
  4. ^ Schol. ad Soph. Oed. Col. 1047; Suid. s. v. Μουσαῖος.
  5. ^ (Mirab. p. 711a.)
  6. ^ Pausanias 25.8
  7. ^ Public Domain Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Musaeus". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
  8. ^ Herodotus 7.6.3–5; see also 8.96 and 9.43
  9. ^ Epicorum graecorum fragmenta, 1878
  10. ^ (Aristoph. Frogs 1031; Paus. 10.9.11; Hdt. 8.96.)
  11. ^ (Hdt. 7.6; Paus. 1.22.7.)
  12. ^ Ancient Greek: Ὑποθῆκαιa
  13. ^ Suid. l.c.
  14. ^ (1.22.7)
  15. ^ Aristoph. Frogs 1031; Plin. Nat. 21.8. s. 21.
  16. ^ Ancient Greek: Θεογονία
  17. ^ Ancient Greek: Τιτανογραφία
  18. ^ Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iii
  19. ^ Ancient Greek: Σφαῖρα
  20. ^ Diog. Laert. l.c
  21. ^ Schol. ad Arist. l.c. ; Plat. Respubl. ii. p. 364, extr.
  22. ^ Public Domain Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Musaeus". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
  23. ^ Euripides, Rhesus
  24. ^ Plato, Ion
  25. ^ Plato, Protagoras
  26. ^ Plato, Apology
  27. ^ Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica IX

External links[edit]