Song to the Heliconian Muses

Listen to:

Song to the Heliconian Muses (1:59)

from Theogony

by Hesiod

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

In ancient Greece, the other most popular poet to rhapsodize, after the divine Homer, was Hesiod, whose birthday we celebrate today. Here is the opening to Theogony, Hesiod’s account of the birth of the gods. It appropriately enough begins with an account of the Muses, who inspire poets as poets inspire rhapsodes:

Of the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing,

who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon,

and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring

and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos,

and, when they have washed their tender bodies,

they make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon

and move with vigorous feet.

From there, they arise and go abroad by night,

veiled in thick mist,

and utter their song with lovely voice,

praising Zeus the aegis-bearer

and queenly Hera of Argos

who walks on golden sandals

and the daughter of Zeus the aegis-bearer – bright-eyed Athene,

and Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows,

and Poseidon the earth-bearer who shakes the earth,

and quick-glancing Aphrodite,

and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever. 

And one day they taught Hesiod glorious song

while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon,

and this word first the goddesses said to me –

the Muses of Olympus,

daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis:

“Shepherds of the wilderness,

wretched things of shame, mere bellies,

we know how to speak many false things

as though they were true;

but we know, when we will,

to utter true things.”

So said the ready-voiced daughters of great Zeus,

and they plucked and gave me a rod,

a shoot of sturdy laurel, a marvellous thing,

and breathed into me a divine voice

to celebrate things that shall be

and things there were in the past;

and they bade me sing

of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally,

but ever to sing of themselves both first and last.