Musaios (poet)

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Linos (right) reads from a papyrus scroll while his disciple Musaios holds writing boards. Red-figure , Attic kylix (440-435 BC) in the Louvre in Paris

Musaios of Athens (Greek: Μουσαῖος belonging to the muse ) was considered the inventor of the hexameter and the first universal genius of the West in antiquity . Neither his place of birth nor the date of his birth or death are known beyond doubt. It is not even certain that it existed at all. The question of which epoch he should have lived in is controversial. The Parian Chronicle mentions him as a contemporary of Orpheus , Eumolpos and King Erechtheus , which gives him a mythological character; however, there are no myths about him.

Attributed works

Ninnion-Pinax from Eleusis , where Musaios is said to have acted as a hierophant (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)

Initially, Musaios seemed to have been known as an oracle poet only among Athenian chresmologists , because the mystical and oracular verses and customs of Attica , especially Eleusis , are related to his name. Herodotus reports that during the reign of Peisistratos in Athens , the scholar Onomakritus had collected and organized the oracles of Musaios, but added his own forgeries that were later discovered by Lasos from Hermione . A generation later, during the invasion of Xerxes I , oracles circulated under the names Musaios and Bakis , as can be found in Sophocles , Aristophanes , Plato and Pausanias . According to Clemens of Alexandria , Eugamon is said to have committed intellectual theft by copying a book by Musaios about Odysseus ' experiences in Thesprotia without citing its source and issuing it as a separate work when he was writing Telegonie . A titanomachy and theogony are also attributed to him by Gottfried Kinkel .

Reputation in ancient times

In the piece Rhesos ascribed to Euripides , Musaios is referred to as the holy citizen of Athens , who has the greatest knowledge of all men. Plato emphasizes in his Ion that poets are inspired by Orpheus and Musaios, but the greater ones by Homer . In his Protagoras Plato says that Musaios was a hierophant and prophet. In Socrates' apology, he mentions Orpheus, Musaios, Hesiod and Homer, with whom he could hardly wait to speak. After Diodorus Musaios was the son of Orpheus, after Tatian his pupil, after Diogenes Laertios again the son of Eumolpus. Alexander Polyhistor , Clemens of Alexandria and Eusebius , on the other hand, considered him the teacher of Orpheus. Aristotle quotes him in Book VIII of his Politics . According to Diogenes Laertios, he died in Phaleron and was buried here, according to Pausanias , he was buried on Philopappos Hill, southwest of the Acropolis , where there was a statue dedicated to a Syrian. For this and other reasons, Artapanus of Alexandria , Alexander Polyhistor, Numenios and Eusebius identify Musaios with Moses , the Jewish legislator. Musaios is referred to in the 6th book of the Aeneid as someone to whom the souls in Elysium looked especially up.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Martin L. West 39 ff.
  2. ↑ Herodotus 7.6.3-5.
  3. ↑ Sophocles fr. 1116; Aristophanes Bátrachoi 1033; Plato Protagoras 316d; Pausanias 12/10/11
  4. ^ Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6, 2, 25, 2.
  5. ↑ Epicorum graecorum fragmenta. 1878.
  6. ↑ Diodorus Siculus 4.25.1-2.
  7. ↑ Pausanias I.25.8.
  8. ^ Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica IX
  9. ↑ Virgil. Aeneid 6,667.
personal data
SURNAME Musaios
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Μουσαῖος; Mousaios
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek poet
DATE OF BIRTH between 10th century BC BC and 7th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH between 10th century BC BC and 7th century BC Chr.
Place of death unsure: Phaleron