S9E9 - Oh Muses! And Other Minor Gods

The stories featured in Greaking Out are original adaptations of classic Greek myths.

This week's story features bees, bees, and cows, kidnapped bees, animal carcasses, revenge birds, epic poetry, dancing, and of course, hubris.

Welcome back to another episode of Greaking Out.

Today's show is all about some of the minor gods in Greek mythology.

And by minor, we don't mean less important.

We just mean the gods that you might not have heard all that much about.

Our earlier Who's Who on Mount Olympus episode showcased some of the bigger and more prominent gods in Greek mythology.

This episode is focused on the gods you might not know about,

but are still important nonetheless.

Exactly.

And to kick things off, we're talking about every artist's favorite group of goddesses, the Muses.

Muses were deities that provided artists with the inspiration they needed to create.

Yep, and they definitely played a big role in getting some of these mythology stories composed.

Homer actually begins his famous poem, The Odyssey, by asking the muses for guidance.

They really took it seriously.

You don't want to upset a muse, especially if you are an artist.

Yeah, I heard that.

Back in the day, many plays and poems and other artistic ventures started with asking the muses for a blessing.

That's why our episode descriptions always start with, oh, muses.

It's not for the algorithm, that's for sure.

Algorithm is, it's a, it's a producer thing, anyway.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Let's go back and start at the beginning.

Zeus was the father to the muses, and their mother was a Titan goddess named Nemazeny.

Nemazeny is the goddess of memory and remembrance.

Now, Nemazeny was a little freaked out by having nine babies.

Yes, nine babies.

Did we mention that there were nine muses?

We did not.

It was the poet Hesiod who declared there were nine muses.

This is the most common interpretation, interpretation, although the number can sometimes vary.

And when Nemazani found out she was going to have nine babies...

This is called non-nuplets.

And it is very, very rare.

There is only one set of non-nuplets alive today.

Wow, that is rare.

But Nemazani was determined to provide the best possible care for her babies.

And it didn't take her very long to realize that these babies were special.

They seemed to be gifted even from a very young age.

And Nemazeny really encouraged her daughters to find their own passions.

They became so well known for their artistry that they were even the ones to bestow the love of music on Apollo when he was born.

So, without further ado, let's meet the magnificent muses.

Their names are Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomene, Polymnia, Thalia, and Terpsicari.

You're missing one.

What?

There are supposed to be nine muses, and you only listed eight.

Hippy, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomini, Polymnia, Thalia, Terpsicari.

You're right, you're right.

I'm missing one.

Who am I missing?

Urania.

Urania!

Right, of course.

Sorry, Urania.

Sorry.

Please don't, you know, curse the podcast or something.

I've suffered from writer's block before, and it is no joke.

Thank you.

But seriously, how am I supposed to remember them all?

There are so many of them.

There are nine.

Well, like I said, so many.

I mean, nine is a.

You could try a mnemonic device.

A what now?

A mnemonic device, a learning technique that aids information retention.

It is named after mnemozeny, the goddess of memory and mother of the muses.

Oh,

okay.

In this case, I'd recommend an acronym or an acrostic.

Take the first initial of each name and turn it into a helpful phrase.

Right!

I learned about those back in school.

I remember.

Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.

Who is your dear Aunt Sally?

And why are we excusing her?

It was a...

Never mind.

Anyway, we have Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpalmini, Polymnia, Thalia, Terpsicari, and Urania.

C-C-E-E-M-P-T-T-U.

Not exactly helpful.

How about a phrase?

Maybe.

Oh, wait, I got it.

I got it.

I got it.

Can cats ever even make people try to urinate?

I really hope that is a poorly worded question and not the phrase you made up.

Can cats ever even make people try to urinate?

It makes perfect sense.

And you have to admit, you're never going to forget it.

I mean, you know.

I am an all-knowing piece of technology so trust me when I say it makes zero sense well we're rolling with it and first up is Calliope she is the oldest and most superior muse and she was known for protecting epic poetry like the Aeneid or the Odyssey and eloquence of speech in other words talking all fancy and stuff.

It's said that Homer even asked Calliope to help inspire him while he was composing the Iliad.

Hesiod thought of her as the most important muse because she inspired the words of kings.

She's also the mother of Orpheus, the famous musician who braved the underworld to find his wife Eurydice, but more on him later.

Next up is Clio, the muse who's best known for history.

She's often depicted holding a scroll.

Euterpe was revered for her musical skills and was said to have discovered several instruments.

She was also called the muse of lyric poetry.

And then we have Erato, the protector of love and more specifically, love poetry.

She is, as you probably guessed, the most romantic of all the muses and was often depicted holding Cupid's love arrows and his bow.

Next up is.

Wait, man, I forgot again.

Who's next?

Where was I?

Use your strange acronym.

Right, right, right.

Can cats ever even make people try to urinate?

Okay, we just finished with the E, so now we're on M.

Make MM for Melpomeny.

That's it.

Wow, that really does work.

Thank you, Oracle.

Melpomini was all about tragedy.

Probably not the most fun muse to have at a party, but she played an important role nonetheless.

She's also said to be the mother of the sirens, the famous half-bird, half-women creatures that would lure sailors to their death with their mesmerizing songs.

Polymnia is next, and she's known as the muse of hymns, or songs to praise the gods.

Her name even means many hymns.

Up next is Terpsicari, the muse best known for dancing.

Now, she would be fun to have at a party, right?

And then there's Thalia.

She was the muse of comedy and had the best jokes of all of ancient Greece.

She's the one I look to when I try to think of funny jokes for this podcast.

Better hope she doesn't hear your mnemonic device or she will curse you for eternity.

Hey, can cats ever even make people try to urinate is a genius acrostic that is both clever and amusing, and I think Thalia would love it.

Okay, and finally, the last but certainly not the least of our muses, Urania, the goddess of all things astrology and astronomy.

If you need someone to interpret the stars, Urania was your girl.

And that's it.

That's all the muses.

Can cats ever even make people try to urinate?

Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomini, Polymnia, Terpsicary, Phalia, and Urania.

Woo!

That's a mouthful right there.

In fact, we're going to take a break.

I'm going to get some water.

I got to hydrate after that.

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Okay, we're back.

We were talking about the muses, remember with the crazy names?

Now, throughout history, these muses, the nine muses, have been inspiring artists to live their best, most fulfilling creative lives.

And even though they are revered and admired by people throughout the world, they also have a little bit of a dark side.

And, like many gods, they have a bit of a temper.

This is demonstrated through the story of the Pierides.

The Pierides were the daughters of King Pieros.

And just like the Muses, there were nine of them in total.

Right, and they probably had a little bit of a rivalry going on because King Pierus decided to raise his daughters to be artists too.

He taught them all about music and poetry and dance, and they were quite talented in their own right.

And while this is great, the world needs as many artists as possible, in my opinion, things went south when Pierras decided to announce that his daughters were even better than the Muses.

This is a poor decision for several reasons.

First, it is highly unlikely that the Pierides were better than the Muses.

And second, because the gods do not like to be insulted.

Right.

And if you've listened to this podcast before, you know that that never ends well.

So, when the muses found out about what Pierras had said, they were, of course, quite offended.

But Pierrus didn't apologize for his arrogance.

In fact, he doubled down on his claim and challenged the Muses to a competition against his daughters.

My daughters are the best artists in the world.

If the Muses think they're so much better, they should come down here and prove it.

The Muses laughed at the king's claims.

We are happy to prove it, Clio said with a laugh.

Thrilled, actually.

And with that, ancient Greece's first sing-off took place right then and there.

The story of this competition is chronicled in Ovid's famous Metamorphosis poem.

This sing-off was judged by a group of nymphs, and it turned out to be a fierce competition.

King Pierus was right.

His daughters daughters were talented.

And when they sang, they sang a song about the war with the giants where the Olympians ran away, scared.

This is not a wise choice.

No, it was not a wise choice, but they did it anyway.

They embellished the story too and said how the Olympians ran so far away they went to Egypt and hid out there in all sorts of disguises.

In this story, Zeus became a ram, Apollo was a crow, Artemis turned into a cat, Dionysus became a goat, Hera was a white cow, Aphrodite was a fish, and Hermes was a flamingo.

Ovid says this is why the Egyptian god Amon is sometimes shown with ram horns.

Now, not only were these women challenging some of the goddesses to a contest, they were also openly mocking the other gods for cowardice.

But when Calliope, the oldest of the muses, sang her song, she stole the show with her superb singing abilities.

It was very obvious who was going to win.

Her song told the story of Persephone and how she was stolen away from her mother Demeter to live with Hades in the underworld.

We tell this famous myth in our episode about Demeter, Persephone, and Hades.

Yes, we do.

And although the Pierides were talented, they couldn't hold a candle to Calliope.

The nymphs declared the Muses the winner.

And even though it was a close contest, the muses said they thought the Pierides were terrible singers.

Urania would go on to describe them as having noisy mouths and said that they squawked and chattered like birds.

Now that, as we say, is a sick burn.

This is an expression to describe the level of the insult using metaphor.

It is meant to compare a stinging insult to a burn on your skin.

Yeah, thanks for explaining that, Oracle.

But here's where it gets really nasty.

The Muses didn't just take the victory and walk away.

Instead, they transformed each of the Pierides sisters into a magpie to punish them for their disrespect in claiming that they were better than them to begin with.

Magpies are small birds known for their frequent chatter and harsh calls.

Yep, and to this day, it is still considered an insult to be called a magpie.

Now, the Muses were definitely some of the most important, quote-unquote, minor gods in Greek mythology, but they're not the only famous family around.

There's another group of minor gods that have played a role in helping the Olympians since the very beginning.

Like the very, very beginning.

We've already told the story of how Zeus defeated his father in the war against the Titans to become king of the gods.

We cover that story in our episode called The Olympians and the Titans.

That's right, but we didn't mention some of his most important allies.

After freeing his siblings from Cronus's stomach, Zeus sent out a call to all of the gods asking for assistance.

And a group of siblings decided to help him out.

Bea was the goddess of force, might, and bodily strength.

Not a bad person to have on your side.

Zealus, her brother, was the god of dedication, rivalry, and zeal.

The English word zeal is derived from this god's name.

It means great energy or enthusiasm.

Exactly.

There was also Kratos, the divine interpretation of strength itself, and Nike, the goddess of victory.

Now, you might call this the dream team right here.

We've got force, zeal, strength, and victory.

Not bad odds, especially when you consider that their father was Pallas, the Titan god of war.

That means that they got a lot of exposure to the concept of war and battles when they were growing up.

And their mother was Styx, the goddess of...

well, the...

The river Styx.

Right, you probably could have figured that one out.

The river, Styx, is the famous river in the underworld.

Styx, the goddess, was the oldest of all the Oceanids.

and was considered the goddess of hatred.

Wow, there's a lot going on in that river.

Anyway, Zeus was thrilled to have these minor gods on his team.

They would play a vital role.

And as we know by now, Zeus and the Olympians went on to win that war and gain control over the Titans.

But that group of minor gods continued to support Zeus through many battles, including the Gigantamachi and the fight against the monster Typhon.

Zeus loved them so much that he gave them a permanent residence on Mount Olympus and considered them to be some of his closest friends.

Yeah, that's true.

They sort of hang out in the background in a lot of famous myths.

Take Bea, for example.

Remember when Prometheus disobeyed Zeus and gave fire to the humans?

Well, Bea was the one who was actually tasked with the difficult job of capturing Prometheus and chaining him to the side of a mountain.

I mean, not just anybody can do that.

You really gotta send your best soldier, and that was Bea.

She was the only one who was able to figure out how to bind Prometheus to the mountain with unbreakable chains.

Right, so as you can see, these minor gods are really around all the time.

Even if they're not the stars of some of these myths, they usually appear somewhere in the background.

Take Aristeas, for example.

You know that person that's just kind of good at everything?

He's got a lot of interests and he's pretty skilled at all of them?

Well, that was Aristeas.

He was the god of shepherds, beekeeping, honey, olive growing, hunting, medicinal herbs, and most importantly, cheesemaking.

Now, you'd think that the guy who invented mozzarella would get a little bit more respect, but no, Aristeas isn't mentioned in very many myths.

And in fact, the myth he's most frequently featured in doesn't paint him in the best light.

If you think Aristeas's name sounds familiar, you are correct.

We mentioned him in a previous episode about Orpheus and Eurydice.

Yeah, and at the time, we just referred to him as a shepherd because he happened to be out working in the fields that day, but Aristeas had a major crush on Eurydice, and he was very angry when she decided to marry Orpheus.

He was so angry, in fact, that he attacked the two of them after the wedding.

While anger and jealousy are natural emotions.

It is okay to have emotions and not act on them.

True.

And it's especially bad because while she was trying to escape from Aristeas, Eurydice tripped and landed on a nest of venomous snakes.

The snakes killed her and she was sent to the underworld.

It was the cheese maker's fault.

Okay, you know what?

Okay, let's just leave the cheese out of it, okay?

All right.

Now, in that episode, we discuss what happens to Orpheus and Eurydice, but we don't really get into what happened to Aristeas.

When Eurydice's sisters realized what had happened, they were outraged and angry.

They were determined to find Aristeas and get justice for what happened to their sister.

And since he was the god of beekeeping, the nymphs decided that that would be the best place to attack.

When Aristeas returned home to his hives, he found all of them empty.

The nymphs had taken all of his beloved bees.

While I am glad that Aristeas is getting punished for his actions, this doesn't seem fair to the bees.

Very true.

But Aristeas was devastated.

He loved those bees more than anything else in the world.

Plus, he now understood that chasing after someone who has already told you no is disrespectful and arrogant.

He truly regretted what he had done to Eurydice, so Aristeus went to a seer to try to figure out how to make amends.

And the seer told him, You must sacrifice four bulls and four cows in Eurydice's honor.

Leave the carcass for three days and then come back.

Well, this was kind of a big ask for Aristeas, but he knew he had to do it.

So he built an altar in a mountain pasture where Eurydice's sisters, the Elonians, were known to live, and he made his sacrifices.

The Elonians must have appreciated the effort because when Aristeas came back a few days later, he found his swarms of bees inside the carcasses.

His beekeeping was able to continue, and the Greeks were able to enjoy honey for years to come.

A single beehive can produce up to 60 to 100 pounds of honey in a year.

Wow.

I'm glad Aristeas was able to make amends.

Honey's delicious.

And I'm very glad we still have cheese.

I mean, it's basically milk you can chew on, right?

What's not to love?

That's not what cheese is.

Well, I did say basically.

Cheese is made from milk, rennet, heat.

Yeah, I know there's other things in there, but I'm just saying that milk.

And bacterial cultures, as well as other flavoring agents.

And what?

Milk takes up about one-tenth the volume of the milk it was made from.

Wait, no, wait, wait, go back to the bacterial thing.

Did you say there's bacteria in there?

Why would Aristease put bacteria in there?

Drinking out.

Thanks for listening.

We have one more episode left in this season, so keep watching this space.

National Geographic Kids Greaking Out is written by Jillian Hughes and Kenny Curtis and hosted by Kenny Curtis, with Tori Kerr as the Oracle of Wi-Fi, audio production and sound design by Scotty Beam, and our theme song was composed by Perry Gripp.

Dr.

Adria Haluska is our subject matter expert.

Emily Burkette, Laurie Boda, and Juliana Schiavo are our producers, and Emily Everhart is our senior producer.