In Our Time - The Muses

Episode Date: May 19, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Muses and their role in Greek mythology, when they were goddesses of poetry, song, music and dance: what the Greeks called mousike, 'the art of the Muses' from which we derive our word 'music.' While the number of Muses, their origin and their roles varied in different accounts and at different times, they were consistently linked with the nature of artistic inspiration. This raised a question for philosophers then and since: was a creative person an empty vessel into which the Muses poured their gifts, at their will, or could that person do something to make inspiration flow? WithPaul Cartledge Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture and AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of CambridgeAngie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, University of SheffieldAndPenelope Murray Founder member and retired Senior Lecturer, Department of Classics, University of WarwickProducer: Simon TillotsonImage: 'Apollo and the Muses (Parnassus)', 1631-1632. Oil on canvas. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the muses have been associated with creativity and inspiration for 3,000 years, even before the time of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The poet Hesiod, writing around 700 BC, tells us that there were nine of them, that they were the daughters of Zeus and of memory, and that they were the ones who inspired him and gave him the right to compose his.

verse. Their names and numbers changed, but consistently the muses became a way to explore the relationship between the poet or creative imagination and inspiration. Did the poets and other thinkers have to join the muses at their home on Mount Helicont to be inspired? Could they do anything to make themselves open to inspiration? What's the role of memory, the mother of the muses in creativity? With me to discuss the muses are Angie Hobbes, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Penelope Murray, founder of member of the Department of of classics and retired senior lecturer at University of Warwick, and Paul Cartlidge, a maritist professor of Greek culture and A.G. Levantis senior research fellow at Clare College

University of Cambridge. Paul Cartlidge. We're reaching back to prehistory here. How deep are the roots of the muses in Greek mythology? Obviously deep, but so far as the ancient Greeks go, our earliest evidence, written evidence, is of course Homer and Hesiod, and we're going to come back to them more than once. But their etymology, the words, the names, which Hesiod is the first to give the individual nine muses are thought to be Indo-European. And those of you who believe in Indo-Europeanism as a sort of generic term will say that, well, perhaps they go back as far as you said 3,000 years in your introduction, which, if my maths are right, that's to about 1,000 BC. Well, some would say they go actually back even further than 1,000 BC. But Homer is the result

of a long, long, bardic tradition, which is totally oral until, miraculously it becomes written. and it goes back at least 500 years. Right, let's start with Homer. What did he say? How did he get it going? Well, Homer mentions. 800 BC about. No, nearer 700 BC in terms of what we call the monumental poems.

And the key thing is that... Is Homer near 700? Yeah, about 700. About 700 and all my notes, it's odd, isn't it? Never mind, away you go. Well, I mean, the alphabet was not, we think, developed till about 750 or so. And in order to write down Homer to preserve a monumental work... Yeah, in that sense.

I'm equivalent here. I'm talking about all origins you're talking about when it was written down, right. Oh, well, no, all origins, I would say, I mean, in terms of the many, many stories, it's got to go back at least to the 13th century, possibly to the 16th century. Let's start with Homer in the air, and you've made your point, and I've got muddled up, but it's on your notes that I got muddled up, so let's go on it. Oh, that's very unfair, but there are two Homeric poems. We attribute two poems to Homer.

the ancients attributed many more. The Iliad the Odyssey, both start with invocation. One invokes a goddess and not specified. The other invokes a muse, not specified which. The implication is, in order for the bard, the poet, to make this terrific feat of partly memory, partly improvisation, he needs not just any old outside assistance, but specifically divine assistance,

and from a female divinity, namely a muse, well, that's interesting, and that sort of sets the whole ball rolling, which I think is the context in which we're going to discuss these extraordinary personages. So memory is as important, is it a big factor in the history? You mentioned in your opening that, according to Hesiod, and there are other genealogies, the nine muses were the daughters of Zeus, who is, of course, the most powerful god of the day, but he was the son of a Titan whom he castrated. Well, Nimuzunet, the woman with whom he had the muses, belongs to that Titan generation. She's an older god than the gods of Olympus.

He mated with her. Later story says nine successive days, and she therefore conceives nine separate. It's almost like IVF. Any rate, nine are produced, and that's the origin. Memory is absolutely the key thing. they are actually referred to later as nighi. Memories, they can be referred to. That is the peculiarity, the single most distinctive thing about them, for some people.

But we talked about Homer. In order to produce a new version, you have, first of all to remember what's existing. And there were people in the 5th century BC who actually claimed to be able to remember all 24, as it was later called 24 books of the Iliad and the Odyssey. astonishing. Can I briefly establish before we go any further Paul that we're talking largely about poetry. Absolutely.

But we're also meeting, I would hope, about creative imagination in other what are now called disciplines which is the same thing applies across the board. So we're also talking about inspiration of that sort in science and write across the book. So this is not just

confined to poetry. No, no, but those are later. Yeah. It's the wedge that comes in. There's one of the muses, Urania. and later when the Greeks developed astronomy, good Greek words, they assigned the function of being an expert in astronomy to her. But there was no such thing as technical specialisation in astronomy in the 8th, 7th century BC. So Urania simply means a heavenly divinity to Hesiod.

But the key thing is, of course, that they are not just doing poetry. Poetry is always accompanied by song and dance. and I'm going to stress, if I may, dance. Penelope, do you mind Murray, how does Hesiod describe the muses? Well, Hesiod describes them as... And this is just soon after Homo, isn't it? Yes, yes. I mean, most people think around about 700 BC that Hesiod's composing this poem, the Theogony,

which is about the birth of the gods. And he begins the poem with a great hymn to the muses who actually inspire the poem. And he describes them as sort of nymph-like creatures who are dancing and singing on Mount Helens. and it was here that he describes his meeting with them, that they teach him song. And what he hears, first of all, is the voice of the muses, who address him in a very typical way that the divine would address the human. They say shepherds of the fields, mere bellies.

We know how to say many pseudo-many false things as though they were true. We know also to tell the truth when we want, and they then pluck for him a branch of laurel as a sort of symbol of his calling. They breathe into him a divine voice so that he can sing of the past and the future. So they're talking about fact-dahn fiction. Well, yeah, well, that's exactly the key thing about that phrase we know how to tell many pursued, are things that look like the truth. Though I think for Hesiod, he's using that to say that he himself is speaking the truth. The muses are authorising figures for him and they order him to sing

about the gods and about themselves so they're ordering him to sing his own poem which he'd started off we read that he says he met them on his way at Mount Helican now is that unusual is this a vision is it unusual for people to say they met them yes I mean I have been a bit misleading

he doesn't say I met them he said it was on Mount Helican that they taught me song so we presume some sort of meeting but it's a kind of almost an auditory hallucination because he hears them. And I think the whole question of, you know, does he believe it or not, has to be seen in the light of general beliefs about relations between gods and men, whether you can meet gods. And the muses, as I say, are kind of nymph-like activities.

And if you believe in nymphs, you're quite likely to meet them. And you meet them not just anywhere, but in sort of remote, wild places. And it's worth stressing at the moment they're divine as well. Absolutely, that they are divine. And they establish that divinity by saying, you know, we can tell the truth when we want to. And Hesiod is obviously implying they've told the truth to him. Sometimes in some certain accounts there are three, sometimes there are seven, but it settles for nine, really. And can you give it, and then later on they become named?

Yes. The Hesiod name. Hesiod name. And that sort of almost settles the matter, doesn't it? Yes, it does. I mean, it's basically when their functions get crystallized, it's basically. on the basis of those Hesiodic names. Can you give us a few of the names?

Yes. Cleo, Uterpe, Thalea, Malpomene, Tepsychere, Erito, Pulamia, Urania, and Calliope. And what's interesting about all those is that each of those names mean something. They're speaking names. Give us a couple of instances. So Cleo means to do with fame.

Tepsychere is she who delights in the dance. Calliope, who we are told by Hesiod is the most senior of them. She's the one with a beautiful voice. But what's interesting in Hesiod is that these muses are a collective, although he gives them individual names, they're not actually individualised.

So together, they make up what the muses mean. Angie Hobbes, thank you very much. Angie Hobbs, did Hesit have thoughts on how the muses have a social function? Oh yes, no, absolutely. So he says that, you know, if you're

feeling burdened by life, but you hear, you know, sweet songs inspired by the muses which tell of the past glorious acts that humans have done or you hear hymns to the gods, then your cares will be banished. So respite from care and daily troubles. But he interestingly says if kings are inspired by the muses, then they will have sort of a hunned tongue. And they, instead of, they will be able to create peace through. sweet words rather than through force. So it's a sort of wonderful unifying sort of possibilities. And I think there's a hint in Hesiod that through these sort of retellings of old heroic tales, you've got this sort of educational aspect and a unifying aspect. What's the educational aspect? That you know, you're

training your young children in their culture. It's an oral culture. Yes, exactly. So and you're you're binding that culture together. So their mother is memory, and we might explore later how much the individual poet needs to access their individual sort of childhood memories or whatever, but there's also a notion of they embody cultural memory. And this is why people remembering all the books is part of a function in society as well as a feat of memory. Absolutely, absolutely crucial. And I think we're going to need to think really hard about where we are with memory now. How did people prove that they were speaking, that the Muses are. speaking to them and through them? Ah, well, I mean, they

don't, do they? So... Was there any indicator? Not that I'm aware of. They just sort of... The quality of they work. They claim it. Which was recognised as exceptional. Well, exactly. So they use

you know, they use the muses as a kind of guarantor of the truth and authority of what they're saying. I mean, Penny has rightly said that the muses actually are a bit teasing and say, could tell you the truth if we want to. But early poets such as Hesiod

use the muses as a kind of, to give their work divine authority. But at the same time, they avoid the charge of hubris. So they've got the muse, they've got a goddesses on their side, but they're not actually claiming to be gods themselves. Why do you don't matter

to them? Well, if you were charged with hubris, if you were trying to rival the gods, then you would get into deep, deep trouble, as I think Thamaris does in, is it the audience? It's already in the Iliad, the second book. So, but in terms of actually... He's not blinded.

In terms of actually proving it, I don't know of any... Penny, do you have... What do they say? I'm remembering the passage in the Odyssey where Odysseus is listening to the Bard Demodicus who is singing about the Trojan War. And Odysseus says, Amuse or Apollo must have taught you.

So beautifully did you sing about this? And I think he means not only that it was factually correct, but that he had the ability to bring it to life, that it made it sound really authentic. Angie, when these individual muses were named, was that some sort of liberation? Well, instead of being the muses, there were particular muses for particular things,

as we've been told by Penelope. Did that enable people to develop in different ways? I mean, instead of saying, the muses, yes. Maybe it may be a wrong sort of question. If it is, I'll ask another. No, no, no. I mean, it's an interesting question.

I mean, when we get, we'll come on to Plato later, but there's definitely a sense that poets and other creative artists and indeed scientists later thought that one particular muse was helping inspire a particular piece of work. So you will see poets talking about the muse who's inspired this particular work. And then in other passages they'll talk about the muses in general. But there is this notion of a sort of special relationship with whatever muse is going to help that art.

form. I mean, Horace invokes all sorts of muses later when we get to Rome. I mean, depending on what he's writing, he'll wheel in the help of a particular muse. Not unlike later saints in the Roman Catholic Church, a particular saint. Exactly. Well, exactly. And yeah, yes. Paul, Paul Coutledge, there's this, there seems to be a relationship between the poet or the creative person and the muse. Was there an general idea that one was dominant or, What went on? I mean, different poets obviously have different approaches. So I'm just going to single out one, and that's Pindar.

And why I think he's interesting is he's on the cusp between the rationalisation, the scientific revolution of the 5th century BC, and the old Homeric, heciotic reception whereby the gods are the world. The world is made of gods. It's not made of matter. And Pindar is between the two. and he says lots about muses, and he refers to individual muses,

and he has peyans, he writes, he writes dirges, but he's most famous for his various praise poems, his Epinacian, his victory odes, for the victors in the main four games, the Olympics, the Nemians, the Pythians, and whatever the fourth one is. Probably the Olympics.

But the point is that his, subjects are male. And so we have a very sort of casual expression that X is your muse, and we talk about a relationship between a particular creative artist, normally female, but not exclusively. Stephen

Spielberg thinks that Mark Rylens is his muse, for example. But Pindar refers to the muses both... What did you do before he met Mar Rylans then? I won't answer that on air. You don't think a muse would sort of lost your lifetime and not be discovered later.

Don't you. Never mind. He may not be... It's trivial. It's trivial. I interrupted you. He may not be his exclusive muse. He's one of his muses. Yeah. Well, so, Pindar is interesting because he's hymming the achievements of a particular individual male,

whether a boy or an adult male, in an athletic context. But in order to do so, he regularly refers to the muses. And what he's often doing is developing actually individual and interestingly new. versions of mythology. It's a mistake to think that myths are fixed. So Hesiod and Homer, they're making their intervention and they become authoritative. But it's still open for later Greece. It's not, in other words, unorthodox. It's not heretical to have a different version of a particular muse or a particular god or goddess that you have a relation with. And at one point, Pindar prays to them. And that's very interesting because you normally pray to an Olympian.

God, because that's up, you pray up. But when you worship the muses, I mean, there's very few passages, but how physically do you worship them, as opposed to invoke them, you pour milk or honey into the ground. Now that means that sort of thought of us not up there, but down there. And yet, in Homer, in Pindan, so they're in Olympus. So there's a puzzle. When did the idea of there being a museum?

muse become just taken for granted and all the poets. Paul's been referring to Binda, but all the poets, you just took it for granted that you had to have a muse. There was a muse around whatever you were doing. And when did start to apply across the board to philosophy and so on. And certainly the muse is an essential part of poetry right from the start

so that with Homer, the muse is part of the tradition and is always associated with epic. And I think you get a muse in all genres of poetry, except possibly some versions of satire. But the thing is the muse can both be an

inspirer but also can be used as a way of talking about your poetry. So the muse is more than any other god or goddess. The muse is actually identified with the product. So that you can talk about my

muse, meaning my poetry. Was there a sense in which there were ways to do this? You went into a trance and allowed the muse to visit you or you did certain things and you would be in touch with the muse or Was anything like that? I don't think we have any descriptions like that.

So it's not quite like, say, the Pythia, the Delphic priestess. We don't actually have descriptions of poets going into trances like that. We just have sort of metaphors about the way in which the relationship between the poet and the muse is. And going back to Pindar, he has a very inventive in terms of metaphor. He's the prophet of the muse, the priest of the muse, riding in their chariot. at one point he even refers to the muse as his mother. So, you know, how you interpret that is an interesting question. But they do, going back to your original question,

I think the muses are, they just are an essential part of poetry. Angie, let's talk about Plato, which you love talking about, and you have done so well so often on this program. He comes, we're in the relationship now between the person and the muse. what does he have to say about this? Essentially. Yeah. So as Penny and Paul have said pre-Plateo,

though people write about being inspired by the news, that goes along with their sense of their own positive, active, creative input. They don't think that being inspired by the news means they're just passive. However, when we get to Plato, everything starts to change. So in a relatively early work, the iron, in the iron, poets are, portrayed as passive and irrational instruments of the muses. The passivity and the irrationality are really emphasised. We're told poets don't create through technet, through skill or craft. They create in a state of sort of frenzied ecstasy of madness and the muse has

entered into them and taken possession of them and the muse is using them as a mouth piece and poets and other creative artists are likened to sort of wild backic or corribantic revelous now the poet is seen as just part of an interesting kind of chain of influences so just as the muse influences the poet and takes possession of the poet to act in this wild way so the poet causes the rhapsode who recites the poetry also to enter this frenzid state, and in turn the rhapsode will put the audience into a wild sort of back-ic emotional state. So there is this chain of influence, magnetic influence, all leading back to the muse. Because that image of the magnet is used by Plato in the iron.

So the muse is likened to a magnet, which has an attractive force on the poet, who has an attractive force on the rhapsod. and then down to the audience. And there is this chain of creativity. But the creativity can only happen if the poet is in this very kind of passive irrational state. And that is new. That emphasis is new because prior to Plato,

poets had also still been seen as active creators in their own right as we've been hearing. And the key point here is that we learn that in the eye that poets don't understand anything about what they're talking about. They don't understand the topics of their poetry. And this, of course, is linked to Socrates in the apology and the speech he makes it his trial. And he says, I was so disappointed.

I went tramping around Athens, interrogating the poets. I love poetry. I thought they'd be brilliant. And actually, they were useless. They had no idea what they were talking about. So the iron starts off looking like, you know, That it's fine, you know, it doesn't matter the poets are irrational, but actually it's a problem.

And then when we get to the Fido and the Fiedrus a bit later, we find out that actually the true Muzzios, the true servant of the Muses, is not actually the poet at all, but the philosopher. And Plato could... What a surprise! Exactly, what a surprise. That the true profit of the Muses is the philosopher.

And so he's beginning to... to develop a hierarchy there and we can, I think the poet comes sixth, doesn't it? The philosopher's top, top, top, top muse-ridden person and the poet is sixth. I'm being rather facetious there, but it's now, for me, interesting, that it's spreading out.

It's spreading out to other, what we, let's call it, discipline for want of a better word. Paul, to switch for a moment, why were the muses female? There's a crew dancer, and there's a more sophisticated one. The crew one is, of course, their gender grammatically is feminine, but of course, somebody had to out.

allocate the feminine gender to them. And I tend to think, I don't know if my colleagues agree with me, that the ancient Greek world was heavily male-dominated, and it probably wasn't an invention of women. The very notion of muses, the very gender of muses grammatically, and their sexuality as women. But nevertheless, I think possibly the act of creation is akin to, and of course Socrates uses, and Plato uses this metaphor of childbirth.

So in other words, for males to produce their poems, and most poets, and indeed most intellectuals, there are exceptions, but most for social rather than intellectual reasons, we're male. They produce, ergo, to put it in the most general terms. Now there's works, Greek for works. And it's a kind of childbirth, and so the muse is act as a sort of midwife for the inspire, and then the males produce. either poetry or astronomy or medicine. And Musa comes, as you've already said, to apply to all high culture. So that you are musios, as Angie just said, means you're infused with the muse. You're philomuzos. You love high culture.

Or conversely, your amusos means you're a barbarian, a kind of savage, you're unintellectual. Is there something deeper here, Angie, about the man being the great creator in that his, this is this is from the notes of one of the three, so stand back. Well, it's, what he says is,

that the idea was that it was the man who was the great creator because it was his seed that was the seed of creation. Well, possibly, though they did think Sappho was fabulous.

I mean, back to the... I know that. That's not the question I'm asking. We know Sappho was fabulous. Come on face up to it. No, no, no. Is there an idea? Is there an idea?

is an idea that the woman was the receptor of the seed of life. Receptical. Except at this stage of history, the muse is such an active, dominant force. I mean, unlike now, where a muse can be rather a passive sort of young person and may not even know they're being muses. But, I mean, surely, in terms of their gender, isn't it relevant that we think the origins of the muses

are in these sort of female nature spirits who hung around springs and so on and linked to the graces, linked to the seasons. There are these early fecund... So they couldn't have been anything but female. Yeah, their fertility symbols. Can I also say that in relation to the femininity of the muses, we have to remember to start with that they are goddesses.

And when you're thinking about a goddess, which takes precedence, the divinity or the femininity, the femaleness, and we must remember that there's this story of the bard Thamaras, which is already there in the Iliad. who was a bard who got too big for his boots and challenged the muses to a song contest. Well, this is fatal. If you think that you're as good as a god

in any context in the Greek world, you've got your comeuppance. And what happens is that they maim him and we're told they take away from him his gift of song. That's there already in the Iliad. It then became a very popular subject on Greek vases. And Sophocles wrote a play, which we no longer have,

but on the subject of famaris. So this is a very key image that poetry and song is a gift that is given by the muses, but can also be taken away by them if you misuse it. So, I mean, when we're thinking of the femaleness of the muses, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are passive figures. I just picture, yeah, one very early Greek poet, actually a Spartan called Altman, at one point says that it was the muses who taught a... Apollo. Now, we haven't really done much on Apollo yet, but he's linked with them. And Plato is, I think, the first to call him Musagetis, the leader of the muses. But Alkman just shows you how varied you could take your view of them. They're very potent. They are the ones who tell Apollo how to sing. It's extraordinary. Yeah. That's a fragment.

And you look as if you want to come in on this. Or do we want to move further? No, because there's so much more to tackle that. Nobody wants to hear that. We want to hear what you've got to say. We want to hear what you're going to say. Now on this programme. Where are we taking Plato? You said in your last thing about Plato, there's more to say. What more is it to say about Plato's views here? Yes.

So in the last day of his life, in Socrates, in the cell, but before he drinks the hemlock, in the Fido. His friends are astonished to find him composing, the man who always refused to write anything down. He's composing him to Apollo, and he's putting one of East London. or more than one of Aesop's fables into Mita.

They say, what on earth are you doing? He said, well, I've always had this dream. It's repeatedly come to me. And it says, Socrates, go and make music, musiquet, and work at it. And he said, I always interpreted that to mean, go and do your philosophy. Just keep doing your philosophy. That is the finest music. But now I'm getting worried.

Maybe Apollo actually meant make music as it's generally understood. That's a sort of music. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. And so he goes to his death thinking he's missed out online. No. But yes.

So I'd still like to rummage around Paul this idea of how this muse could be invoked. How important people thought it was. Was it a convention? Was it, oh, I called on the muse and then I said. And did poets always have to be in a frenzy? I don't think we've done enough on that. Because philosophers weren't supposed to be in a frenzy, weren't they? And astronomers weren't supposed to be in a frenzy and so on.

I'm not probably the person to talk about poetic inspiration, but Musiqueh, which Angie mentioned is, of course, now become the generic term for all what I would call high culture. And so I'm quite interested in the fact that these muses get allocated different functions. And therefore, if you happen to be a specialist in epic or a specialist historian, then you have a different principle muse from someone else.

That's a different thing from talking about poetic inspiration. But Penny probably wants to come in on that. Yes, I think what I want to say is that there's a difference between invoking a muse in poetry. You don't invoke muses in any other. I mean, historians never invoke muses, do they? But the muses in the Hellenistic period, which is a great era of scholarship and research, when everybody wants to kind of classify things, pin things down.

That's when they're... they start really allocating individual things to each muse. And I think it happens particularly in the visual. It's an iconographical thing that you can recognise each muse from their attributes. And yet, paradoxically, there is no muse of visual art. No, exactly. Well, yes, you're saying, that's a good. Why is that?

Yes. Well, I have a little story, which is a famous one, Zyuxis, who was a painter from South Italy. He was asked to paint a painting for a shrine of Hira by the Croton, people of Croton. So he said, OK, I'll do one of Helen. But he didn't invoke a muse in order to inspire him. He selected five comely, not yet married virgins of Crotone. And he took the best features of each, put them together as a mashup.

And that was his Helen. But the point is muses didn't intervene at all. Whereas Johannes Vermeer, who is one of the first, of my favourite painters, he thinks that the muse of painters is Clio. Now, Clio is my muse, because she's the muse of history. So I like Vermeer even more, if he really did say that. Well, yes, he did. There's that wonderful painting of Clio as the muse of history. But did he say, I mean, he knew what she was. Well, I think it's something to do with historical painting being their highest.

Was he asked, why did you choose Clio? Because you think she's the muse of painting? Or just do you happen to be? No, because the muse of painting. muse of that history painting is the most important genre. Say you have the muse of history as the muse of painting. Can we talk about the connection between the muse and the museumon at Alexandria? Yes, absolutely. I mean, well even Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, they had had museum in them

sort of with statues of gods and where lectures took place. But yes, of course, the Mousaon in Alexandria, literally a temple to the Muses, a shrine to the muses with a library attached and it had been run by a priest. And it's so interesting because initially it was a place where scholars gathered, where research was done. It was meant to be a place to inspire active, new, creative thought. And when you look at the history of the word museum, it's almost like we're coming back to that notion of museums there, not just to collect and display cultural artefacts. but to promote debate.

And yes, so initially you've got, there was a lecture hall, there was a peripatos where people walked around and debated. Scholars came from all over the Greek world to study there. So, yeah, a shrine to the muses. You were meant to go there to work. We didn't, it was a very good story that Paul told about the painting of Holland,

but we didn't nail why visual arts didn't have a muse. Could you nail it for us, please, but I think the visual arts, are conceptualised in a completely different way. But is it to do the fact that that's to do with a different sort of activity? Yes, absolutely. I think there is right from the start. There's the notion that the visual arts involve craftsmanship, they involve the hands as opposed to the mind.

I think there's that sort of prejudice that runs through the whole of Greek thought. And it begins with Homer you get Hephaeis and Athenian inspire the craftsmen. The muse inspires the poet. and that things to do with the mind, words, music are regarded as being, well, they're thought of as being different. And you never really get, art is conceptualised in terms of imitation. So when you're, I mean, works of art are incredibly admired. But because they're so lifelike, because they, you know, they imitate things so well. But they're not conceptualised in terms of inspiration, which is thought of as a kind of mental process.

and I think they that is not really you know. Does not the architect as Marx once said invent the building in his mind or her mind before? No, but I mean, why would the ancients not have thought about? Well, I'm thinking of painting and sculpture that they think about painting and sculpture in terms of using your hands. And I think that's, you know, and that's a current that runs very much through antiquity. So Art and Craft is so. separated from that far back really. Can I now move on a bit?

Because we have to move on. Angie, what about the Romans they took up? They took up Greek culture. There's that wonderful line from Horace, isn't it? That they were taken captive by those who were they taken capture. The Greek culture took... Right, so they took it over.

Two really interesting developments, I think. One is that though most of them do invoke the muses, they also have to pay tribute to their patrons. So you've got the political necessity of being really kind dutiful to your patron. And a poet like Virgil, he's very clever.

So in something like the Georgics, he talks to his patron, Augustus is sort of given credit. But when he gets to epic, he invokes a muse for the Aeneid. Now, the other thing is that though I suspect some of the Roman poets really did think that the muses had some divine aura still, it's clear that other Roman poets are treated. the more as allegories. And so Ovid plays around, has a lot of fun with him. So in his Arsommatoria, his art of love, he says, I don't need to invoke a muse to tell me about

erotic love. I know all about that myself. And I don't need to pretend I, you know, a muse visited me while I was tending sheep. And in his fasti, and I can do all this by myself. And in his fasti, he, a fasti five, I think, he has the muses sort of bickering about how to name May. So he's really parodying the whole idea. But I don't think all the Roman poets were just doing straightforward parodies, but we are moving towards the Muses as Allegories,

which of course is going to be developed by the Christian writers. Are they Paul Cartledge at this stage losing their divine powers? Under the Romans and of course under the Christians, they're totally out of court.

Yes, without question. And so we ultimately get to our debased usage. I know I'm leaping across the centuries. You don't want to be I see. Well, I've nothing to add to what Andrew said about how the Roman poets were able both to invoke. Seriously, that's Virgil, but I think that's tradition.

In other words, he's working in a genre of epic and Homer in Vokes the Muses, so I must. Yeah, no, I slightly want to disagree with him about that, because I mean, we often are told that the history of the muse is the history of a fading metaphor, but that is to under estimate what a metaphor is, because in a way the muse names something, which you can't talk about in another way. And so that although a lot of, you know, you get a lot of parody of the muses, and they're used as traditional features in Roman poetry, they can also be used in a very meaningful way. So that propitious, for instance, I mean, he talks about how he dreams he's on Mount Helicon, and he's saying something there.

it's not just decoration. And then I don't know that I'm allowed to leap forward to Milton. I mean, you know, here we are. Everyone said the muse is dead. And yet Milton has these tremendous invocations of the muse. And he calls on Urania, who he says is the heavenly muse, who he actually identifies with the sort of heavenly spirit. But he says the meaning, not the name I call.

So in other words, you know, it's not the antique muse he's talking about, but the image is something which is incredibly powerful for him. It's what Paul was saying at the beginning of the programme, before home with the idea of Gaia and Urania. Yes. In that area, the earth and the sky. Yes, yes, and the heavenly, uranium, particularly because it's heavenly. But it means something to him personally, that's what you're saying.

Yeah, absolutely. And it means something to us as we read it as well. You know, it's not just trivial. Are you reading him in English or Latin? I mean, and earlier than Milton, so in the Italian Reissos, and the 15th century for Chino is really interesting because he's a Christian writer, but he does not treat the muses simply as allegory's.

So he makes it absolutely clear that he thinks the nine muses represent the music made by the movements of the eight heavenly spheres plus the harmony of all the eight spheres acting together. That's the ninth muse. And it's all fine. This is all fine with Christian thought

because his Christian god has ordained all the heavens and all the movements of the spheres. So he's, with his syncretic kind of view of the world, he's happy to combine Greek and Roman religion and Christianity, and it's active for him. Paul, you implied that Christianity sort of pushed the muses out of court, although Milton was in that Christian tradition, into a St. Chechnya or Zopa musifier,

and on it went in the 19th century. But what about now? Why do you think the muse is today? Well, that's an incredibly general question, but I'm going to bring in, I'm going to drag in, one of my favourite ballets, and it's a Balanchine ballet, and it's called Apollo. And it starts with the birth of Apollo, and then it goes on to how he relates with the muses,

and of course the most important one for him is Tep Sicory, who, as Penny said at the beginning, she who delights an interesting chorus in Greek, I believe, originally meant dance in unison, not song. You sing as you dance, but the original. So dance is fundamental to ancient. Greek culture. And there are two other muses. Caliopi, the oldest, the senior, beautiful voice, and polyhimnia. And polymnia is she who are many, many hymns, many songs. It's very unspecific.

But it's an absolutely wonderful ballet set by Stravinsky. He wrote it in Nice between 2728, Balanchine very young, and it was first performed in Washington, D.C., but then in Europe by Diagelas, Ballet Rus. Do you want to see anything remaining of the word muse or the idea muse in the culture we have now? Absolutely. So an artist's muse now is much more passive. We've got the artist

as the dominant creative force. On the other hand, as we've seen, the word museum is returning to some of its interactive thought stimulating roots. But I'd like to just mention the word muse to muse upon. We've seen that the muses were connected

to running water, to springs, to fountains, fluidity. So if you're musing, you are letting your mind wander. You're opening yourself up to new influences and new ideas and not thinking into structured away. And my worry is that current technology and current time poverty is going to reduce our ability to muse. Yes, because basically what the muse is about is creativity.

That's why the muse is still such a potentially powerful image because it's about human creativity. And I rather share with you kind of worries about the trivialisation of the notion of the muse, particularly this idea which is, I mean, all sort of pick up. But in many areas, particularly areas of the science and that, creativity has never been as intense without amuse. There's not that tradition, is there?

But the thing about where do ideas come from? No, I think that's the big question. And I think that we've rummaged around that, but I don't think that's crackable, whether it's internal or external. No, no. I'm being told that we've got very little time left. My semaphore signals from the other room.

Sorry, Angie. I've got to go. Thanks to Angie Hobbes, Penelope Murray and Paul Cartlitz. Next week, we'll be talking about the Gettysburg Address delivered by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

Yeah, we're on the hour of the podcast. I mean, one thing we didn't discuss, which I think, is really important is how there are muses, yes, mainly for poetry and music and dance, but also for the sciences. And so the connections between the arts and the sciences. I tried to keep bringing it in. Well, no, you did.

No, I was trying to. We were trying to. Yes, I mean, which ones? I mean, Urania is the astronomy, but that's because she used to do with the heavens. I mean, it's because he had called her. Why does astronomy need a muse? But the Renaissance took that up and they had, because it's something to do with the music of the spheres, isn't it?

It's the relationship between music and mathematics. It's very, very Greek. It is very Greek. It is very unique. Absolutely. And that's something again we're coming back to in the modern museum where you get the arts and the sciences being brought more and more together. Yes, yes.

The first one so called in this country was in Oxford. It was the trade scan collection, the Ashmoreland. No, I wondered why he chose that name because before then you have individuals who have collections and they call them. cabinets of curiosity or of virtue. But this was a major step back. It's part of the Renaissance, to be honest. Yes. I mean, another thing we didn't discuss is what kind of people are selected by the muse.

So Plato says you have to be a pure and gentle soul for the muse to enter you. And I'm wondering, is there anything you could do in terms of your education, your training, to increase your chances of being selected by a muse? I think once you start sort of trying to be a cardboard cutout, you've had it. There's nothing pure and gentle about Shelley or Baron. Barron, Mewis. The wordplay to admit that they were elected by the Mews. The other thing we didn't discuss at all was the notion of the embodiment of the Mews,

the Mews as mistress. Do you mean in modern time? Well, you do get it in the ancient world. Do you mean, for example, Friney, who poses for a Scopexite. No, no, I mean in Latin love elegy, where you get the mistress as Mews. And the Pupersius actually says. I don't need a muse, my god is my muse. Yes, and so you get that, because this is the ubiquitous idea of the muse now, isn't it?

That the muse is a woman, usually who inspires a man. And there's actually, there's very little... In that terms of, the muse is a woman, you said that, as if it's all changed, the same thing, isn't it? But what I do find interesting about that is that now the muse is regarded as this passive figure, whereas for the music, the 18th century, the blue stocking group, say, the muse and Sappho as the 10th muse were icons of female capability. But they were their own, Salon.

These long form discussions where we started in around 800 BC and try to get it to the very difficult to manage it in the way you are. We didn't talk about the Enlightenment either. I mean, so in Paris, here Simon. There is lately Le Noff Seux. Yes, the nine sisters. Yes, the muses. I think Voltaire was in it. Exactly.

And Diderot, yeah, absolutely. They all visited. Yes, but the point about the blue stockings is that they're women themselves. Absolutely. So that the females are, you know, active. Typically unmarried. I forgot to say this. We're on Twitter at BBC in our time.

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