Musaeus of Athens (Greek:Μουσαῖος,Mousaios) was a legendary Greekpolymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet, and musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry inAttica. He composed dedicatory and purificatoryhymns and prose treatises, and oracular responses.
A semimythological personage, to be classed withOlen,Orpheus, andPamphus. He was regarded as the author of various poetical compositions, especially as connected with the mystic rites of Demeter atEleusis, 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 aThracian. According toDiodorus Siculus, Musaeus was the son of Orpheus,[3] and according toTatian he was the disciple of Orpheus. Others made him the son ofAntiphemus, or Antiophemus, andHelena.[4]Alexander Polyhistor,Clement of Alexandria andEusebius say he was the teacher of Orpheus.
In Aristotle[5] a wifeDeioce is given him; while in the elegiac poem ofHermesianax, quoted by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 597),Antiope is mentioned as his wife or mistress. TheSuda describes him as having 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 atPhalerum, with the epitaph: "Musaeus, to his sire Eumolpus dear, in Phalerean soil lies buried here." According toPausanias, he was buried on theMouseion Hill, south-west of theAcropolis,[6] where there was a statue dedicated to a Syrian.[7]
Herodotus reports that, during the reign ofPeisistratus atAthens, the scholarOnomacritus collected and arranged the oracles of Musaeus but inserted forgeries of his own devising, later detected byLasus of Hermione.[8] The mystic and oracular verses and customs of Attica, especially ofEleusis, are connected with his name. ATitanomachia andTheogonia are also attributed to him byGottfried Kinkel.[9]
We find the following poetical compositions, accounted as his among the ancients:
Aristotle also quotes some verses of Musaeus in Book VIII of hisPolitics: "Song is to mortals of all things the sweetest." but without specifying from what work or collection.
William Smith noted a theory that the Musaeus who is named as the author of the Theogony and Sphaera was a different person from the legendary bard of the same name, but he suggests that there is not any evidence to support that view. The poem on the loves ofHero and Leander is by a very much later author, known asMusaeus Grammaticus.[7]
Smith, William, ed. (1870)."Musaeus".Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.| International | |
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