MUSES. Near the highest peak of snowy Olympus, the nine Muses—Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Ourania, and Calliope, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory)—were born to be, in Hesiod's words, "the forgetting of misfortunes and respite from sorrow" (Theogony 55). Like-minded virgins, free from grief, their only concern is song. Always accompanied by the Graces and Desire, they dance in chorus on delicate feet on the mountaintops, bathe in springs with violet glints, and make their way to the radiant abodes of Zeus, which laugh under the spell of their sweet voices (Theogony 1ff.).

What the Muses sing is mnēmosunē—memory of what is, what was, and what will be. And for the Greeks, memory is truth. The subject of their song is the kingdom of Zeus the father, he who subdued the Titans, who restored his brothers' power and imposed a harsh fate...