Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Confessions of a know-it-all

Yesterday I went out to dinner with my best beloved, D, to a Greek/Cypriot restaurant named for the muses, Moyses Taverna.

The menu gave a list of muses not unlike this one from Wikipedia:

Calliope (epic poetry)
Euterpe (music/lyric poetry)
Clio (history)
Erato (lyrics/love poetry)
Melpomene (tragedy)
Polyhymnia (sacred poetry and geometry)
Terpsichore (dancing)
Thalia (comedy)
Urania (astronomy and astrology)

Upon reading it D commented on the number of kinds of poetry. At which point I launched into an explanation that poetry was what people of the time wrote and therefore wanted muses for. I went on to explain that the reason poetry was fashionable is that it is more easily memorised and that in a society where many people are illiterate and writing materials are expensive that is important.

Now the confession I have to make is that although that is all very plausible and I expect it is true - I made it up.

I think I need some help from Clio.

1 comment:

Susan Harper said...

What, no "probably" in the explanation to mark it as conjecture rather than hearsay? Tch tch tch. We'll have to retrain you, go get a higher degree.