Thalia (Muse)

Roman statue of Thalia from Hadrian's Villa, now at the Prado Museum (Madrid)
Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry, Jean-Marc Nattier
Thalia, Muse Of Comedy by Louis-Michel van Loo.

Thalia (/θəˈlaɪə/; Ancient Greek: Θάλεια, Θαλία; "the joyous, the flourishing", from Ancient Greek: θάλλειν, thállein; "to flourish, to be verdant"), also spelled Thaleia, was the goddess who presided over comedy and idyllic poetry. In this context her name means "flourishing", because the praises in her songs flourish through time.[1] She was the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the eighth-born of the nine Muses.

According to pseudo-Apollodorus, she and Apollo were the parents of the Corybantes.[2] Other ancient sources, however, gave the Corybantes different parents.[3]

She was portrayed as a young woman with a joyous air, crowned with ivy, wearing boots and holding a comic mask in her hand. Many of her statues also hold a bugle and a trumpet (both used to support the actors' voices in ancient comedy), or occasionally a shepherd's staff or a wreath of ivy.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Theoi Project - Mousa Thaleia
  2. ↑ Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 1.3.4.
  3. ↑ Sir James Frazer's note on the passage in the Bibliotheca.

References

  • Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1. "Thalia" 1. p. 442.
  • Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Thaleia" 1.
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