MUSAEUS

1. A semi-mythological personage, to be classed with Olen, Orpheus, and Pamphus. He was regarded as the author of various poetical compositions, especially as connected with the mystic rites of Demeter at Eleusis, over which the legend represented him as presiding in the time of Heracles.

He was reputed to belong to the family of the Eumolpidae, being the son of Eumolpus and Selene.

In other variations of the myth he was less definitely called a Thracian. According to other legends he was the son of Orpheus, of whom he was generally considered as the imitator and disciple. (The Aeneid by Virgil Book VI) Others made him the son of Antiphemus, or Antiophemus, and Helena.

In Aristotle a wife Deioce is given him; while in the elegiac poem of Hermesianax, quoted by Athenaeus, Antiope is mentioned as his wife or mistress.

Suidas gives him a son Eumolpus. The scholiast on Aristophanes mentions an inscription said to have been placed on the tomb of Musaeus at Phalerus. Pausanias mentions a tradition that the Movcrziov in Peiraeus bore that name from having been the place where Musaeus was buried. Onomacritus, in the time of the Peisistratidae, made it his business to collect and arrange the oracles that passed under the name of Musaeus, and was banished by Hipparchus for interpolating in the collection oracles of his own making. Precepts, addressed to his son Eumolpus, and extending to the length of 4000 lines (Suid. I. c.). 3. A hymn to Demeter.

This composition is set down by Pausanias as the only genuine production of Musaeus extant in his day. What this sphaera was, is not clear.

Aristotle quotes some verses of Musaeus, but without specifying from what work or collection. Some have supposed the Musaeus who is spoken of as the author to be a different person from the old bard of that name. But there does not appear to be any evidence to support that view. The poem on the loves of Hero and Leander is by a very much later author. Nothing remains of the poems attributed to Musaeus but the few quotations in Pausanias, Plato, Clemens Alexandrinus, Philostratus, and Aristotle.

Milton couples his name with that of Orpheus in his “Il Penseroso”:

“But O, sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what love did seek.”

[ See: Il Penseroso ]

2. An ancient Theban lyric poet, the son of Thamyra and Philammon, who, according to Suidas lived considerably before the Trojan war.

3. An epic poet, a native of Ephesus, who lived probably about the middle of the second century b. c. According to Suidas, he wrote a poem, in ten books, dedicated to Eumenes and Attalus.

4. A grammarian, the author of the celebrated poem on the loves of Hero and Leander. Nothing is known of his personal history ; and the elder Scaliger even supposed that the poem was the work of the ancient Athenian bard. But in many of the manuscripts the author is distinctly called Musaeus the grammarian; and it is now agreed on all hands that the poem is quite a late production. According to Schrader and other critics the author did not live earlier than the fifth century of our era. The general style is quite different from the simplicity of the older poets, and several individual expressions betray the lateness of its origin. The poem was first discovered in the thirteenth century. Numerous editions of it have been published. The first, with a Latin version by Marcus Musurus, without any indication of the date or place. There are several translations of the poem. In English, by Marlowe, Stapylton, Stirling, etc; in German, by Stollberg, Passow, etc; in French, by Marot, in Italian, by Bernardo Tasso, Bettoni, etc.