Towards Fiction

Generally speaking, it is doubtful whether the traditional idiom of the Muses as attested in Homer and Hesiod can be fully applicable to the sort of poetry which flourished in the seventh and sixth centuries BC and which is conventionally labelled as ‘lyric’. We saw that the Muses of the epic tradition were essentially eyewitnesses of past events, who transferred their knowledge of these events to the poet and thus guaranteed the truthfulness of his account. Now in so far as most Greek ‘lyric’ poetry, both sung and recited, was, perhaps with the exception of Stesichorus’, presumably first person poetry dealing with the here and now rather than the historical past, we may well wonder for what particular purpose the ‘lyric’ poets would have needed the Muses’ help at all. Examination of the Muses’ role in each separate genre of ‘lyric’ poetry gives us the answer.

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