In Greek mythology, Erato (Ancient Greek: Ἐρατώ) was one of the Muses of Olympus. She was assigned to the artistic sphere of imitation and love-poetry. She was represented holding a lyre.
Her name would mean "desired" or "lovely", if derived from the same root as Eros, as Apollonius of Rhodes playfully suggested in the invocation to Erato that begins Book III of his Argonautica.[1]
Function[]
Erato is the Muse of lyric poetry, particularly erotic poetry, and mimic imitation. In the Orphic hymn to the Muses, it is Erato who charms the sight. Since the Renaissance she has mostly been shown with a wreath of myrtle and roses, holding a lyre, or a small kithara, a musical instrument often associated with Apollo.
Family[]
In Hesiod's genealogy, Erato is the daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne, and the sister to Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.[2]
Her father gave Erato to Malus (eponym of Malea), as a bride and by him became the mother of Cleophema who bore Aegle (Coronis) by Phlegyas.[3]
Mythology[]
Erato was named with the other muses in Hesiod's Theogony. She was also invoked at the beginning of a lost poem, Rhadine (Ῥαδινή), that was referred to and briefly quoted by Strabo.[4] The love story of Rhadine made her supposed tomb on the island of Samos a pilgrimage site for star-crossed lovers in the time of Pausanias[5] and Erato has linked again with love in Plato's Phaedrus;[6] nevertheless, even in the third century BC, when Apollonius wrote, the Muses were not yet as inextricably linked to specific types of poetry as they became.
Erato is also invoked at the start of book 7 of Virgil's Aeneid, which marks the beginning of the second half or "Iliadic" section of the poem.[7]
References[]
- ↑ Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3.1–5
- ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 53 ff., 78, 915 ff.; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.3.1; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.7.1
- ↑ Isyllus, Hymn to Asclepius 128.37 ff.
- ↑ In Geography 8.3.20; Strabo's attribution of the poem to Stesichorus was refuted by H. J. Rose, "Stesichoros and the Rhadine-Fragment", The Classical Quarterly 26.2 (April 1932), pp. 88–92.
- ↑ Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 7.5.13
- ↑ Plato, Phaedrus 259
- ↑ Virgil, Aeneid 7.37
[]
| Muses | |
|---|---|
| Mousai Titanides | Aiode • Melete • Thelxinoe • Arkhe • Mnemosyne |
| Mousai Olympides | Calliope • Clio • Erato • Euterpe • Melpomene • Terpsichore • Urania • Polyhymnia • Thalia |
| Mousai Apollonides | Cephiso • Borysthenis • Hypate • Nete • Mese |