Mnemosyne is a Mount Othrys character in Greek Mythology. She made her début in around seven hundred BCE on Homer's: The Iliad and ends around the ninth century.
Mnemosyne was the greek personification of Memory in Greek Mythology.
History[]
In Greek mythology, Mnemosyne was a titaness, she was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and the mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus:
- Calliope (Epic Poetry)
- Clio (History)
- Euterpe (Music)
- Erato (Lyric Poetry)
- Melpomene (Tragedy)
- Polyhymnia (Hymns)
- Terpsichore (Dance)
- Thalia (Comedy)
- Urania (Astronomy)
In Hesiod's Theogony, kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses.
Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights, thus birthing the nine Muses. Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in Hades, counterpart to the river Lethe, according to a series of 4th century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in dactylic hexameter. Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when reincarnated. Initiates were encouraged to drink from the river Mnemosyne when they died, instead of Lethe. These inscriptions may have been connected with Orphic poetry.
Similarly, those who wished to consult the oracle of Trophonius in Boeotia were made to drink alternately from two springs called "Lethe" and "Mnemosyne." An analogous setup is described in the Myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic.
Family[]
| Chaos | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gaia | Ouranos † | Pontus | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rhea | Cronus † | Mnemosyne | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Notes:
- Solid lines denote parent-child blood relationships
- Dashed lines denote marriage relationships that result in offspring
- † denotes the deceased
- Zeus was also married to Mnemosyne, but not proven.
Trivia[]
References[]
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