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Updated: August 2, 2024
These were not always nine in number. Three Muses were also recognized at Delphi and Sicyon. Four are mentioned as daughters of Jupiter and Plusia, while some accounts speak of seven Muses, daughters of Pierus. Eight was the number known in Athens, until finally the Thracian worship of nine spread over the whole of Greece.
The second intermezzo dealt with a contest in song between the daughters of Pierus and the muses. The judges were hamadryads and the defeated mortals were punished for their presumption. The text was by Rinuccini and the music by Luca Marenzio, the famous madrigalist.
But I pointed out to her that I had been placed in a false position, and that until this were rectified neither she nor I could reap the credit due to us. Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly discontented. She was happy enough, she says, when first she left the home of Pierus, her father, to become a Muse. On those humble beginnings she looks back with affection.
The nine daughters of King Pierus of Macedonia fared no better, and after an unsuccessful contest were changed into birds. The Muses were closely connected with Apollo, who was looked upon as their leader. Many mountains, as well as grottos, wells, and springs in various parts of Greece, were sacred to them.
"The magpies," said he, with the air of a man that's a goin' to hit you hard. "It is a spring called Pierus after a gentleman of that name, whose daughters, that were as conceited as you be, were changed into magpies by the Muses, for challenging them out to sing. All pratin' fellows like you, who go about runnin' down doctors, ought to be sarved in the same way."
It is said that "at the song of the daughters of Pierus the sky became dark, and all nature was put out of harmony; but at that of the Muses the heavens themselves, the stars, the sea, and the rivers stood motionless, and Helicon swelled up with delight, so that its summit reached the sky."
And these plates proved to be so beautiful and so well engraved, that the same Jacopo executed, likewise after the design of Rosso, the story of the daughters of Pierus, who, for seeking to contend with the Muses and to sing in competition with them, were transformed into crows.
The parentage of these divinities is given with as many variations as their number. Some call them daughters of Uranus and Gæa, others of Pierus and Antiope, still others of Apollo or of Jupiter and Minerva. The analogy between the Muses and the nine maidens in the Egyptian troupe of Osiris has already been noted.
As to the Muses, there were at first four Thelxiope, Aoede, Arche, and Melete daughters of the second Jupiter; afterward there were nine, daughters of the third Jupiter and Mnemosyne; there were also nine others, having the same appellations, born of Pierus and Antiopa, by the poets usually called Pierides and Pieriæ.
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