Here again, Calliope (epic poetry) carries a writing tablet; Clio (history) carries a scroll and books; Euterpe (song and elegiac poetry) carries a flute, the aulos; Erato (lyric poetry) is often seen with a lyre and a crown of roses; Melpomene (tragedy) is often seen with a tragic mask; Polyhymnia (sacred poetry) is often seen with a pensive expression; Terpsichore (choral dance and song) is often seen dancing and carrying a lyre; Thalia (comedy) is often seen with a comic mask; and Urania (astronomy) carries a pair of compasses and the celestial globe. Functions
In society
The Greek word mousa is a common noun as well as a type of goddess: it literally means art or poetry. According to Pindar, to "carry a mousa" is to excel in the arts. The word derives from the Indo-European root *men-, which is also the source of Greek Mnemosyne and mania, English mind, mental and monitor, Sanskrit mantra and Avestan Mazda. The Muses, therefore, were both the embodiments and sponsors of performed metrical speech: mousike (whence the English term music) was just "one of the arts of the Muses". Others included science, geography, mathematics, philosophy, and especially art, drama, and inspiration. In the archaic period, before the widespread availability of books (scrolls), this included nearly all of learning. The first Greek book on astronomy, by Thales, took the form of dactylic hexameters, as did many works of pre-Socratic philosophy. Both Plato and the Pythagoreans explicitly included philosophy as a sub-species of mousike.
The Muses were venerated especially in Boeotia, in the Valley of the Muses near Helicon, and in Delphi and the Parnassus, where Apollo became known as Mousēgetēs (Muse-leader) after the sites were rededicated to his cult. Often Muse-worship was associated with the hero-cults of poets: the tombs of Archilochus on Thasos and of Hesiod and Thamyris in Boeotia all played host to festivals in which poetic recitations accompanied sacrifices to the Muses. The Library of Alexandria and its circle of scholars formed around a mousaion (i.e., museum or shrine of the Muses) close to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Many Enlightenment figures sought to re-establish a "Cult of the Muses" in the 18th century. A famous Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Les Neuf Soeurs (The Nine Sisters, that is, the Nine Muses); Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Danton, and other influential Enlightenment figures attended it. As a side-effect of this movement the word museum (originally, cult place of the Muses) came to refer to a place for the public display of knowledge. Museia (Μούσεια) was a festival dedicated to Muses which was held every fifth year on the lower slopes of Mount Helicon in Boeotia. There was also another festival which was called Museia, which was celebrated in schools. Places named after the Muses
In New Orleans, Louisiana, there are streets named for all nine. It is commonly held that the local pronunciation of the names has been colorfully anglicized in an unusual manner by the "Yat" dialect.