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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RealAlHazred" data-source="post: 9784427" data-attributes="member: 25818">Also, a word as to the Muses. You'll notice they're not in my list of Olympians. "But they were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, right?"Well... Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BCE, states that Osiris first recruited the nine Muses, along with the satyrs, while passing through Aethiopia, before embarking on a tour of all Asia and Europe, teaching the arts of cultivation wherever he went. So, obviously the original story underwent many changes. I am intrigued by the idea that the Mouseion (their great temple in Alexandria) might not emphasize their purported Greek origin, but might harken back to their actual origin: Thrace. So, they were probably Thracian goddesses (three in number) who proved popular and were exported. Since Alexandria was simultaneously a center of learning in the ancient world, and also a major seaport that saw massive amounts of trade, I like the idea that the builders of the Mouseion knew exactly their origin, and went with a syncretic origin, in keeping with the placement of the Mouseion inside the Serapeum. It's syncretic <s>turtles</s>gods all the way down!<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Calliope (eloquence and epic poetry)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kleio (history)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Polyhymnia (sacred poetry, sacred hymn, dance and eloquence, as well as agriculture and pantomime)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Euterpe (music)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Terpsichore (chorus and dance)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Erato (lyric poetry and erotic poetry)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Melpomene (tragedy)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Thalia (comedy and idyllic poetry)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Urania (astronomy and astrology -- basically the same thing at the time)</li> </ul></blockquote>

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