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 spelt Thaleia, was the Muse 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

• Muses in popular culture

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.

External links

• Media related to Thalia at Wikimedia Commons
• Theoi.com - Thaleia
• Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 40 images of Thalia)