Muse. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They are considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in these ancient cultures. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, musician, or writer. The earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin. There, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus cited Homer and Hesiod to the contrary, observing: Writers similarly disagree also concerning the number of the Muses; for some say that there are three, and others that there are nine, but the number nine has prevailed since it rests upon the authority of the most distinguished men, such as Homer and Hesiod and others like them. Diodorus states that Osiris first recruited the nine Muses, along with the satyrs, while passing through Aethiopia, before embarking on a tour of all Asia and Europe, teaching the arts of cultivation wherever he went. According to Hesiod's account, generally followed by the writers of antiquity, the Nine Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, figuring as personifications of knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music. The Roman scholar Varro relates that there are only three Muses: one born from the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is embodied only in the human voice. They were called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory and Aoide or Song. Three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarch's Quaestiones Convivales. However, the classical understanding of the Muses tripled their triad and established a set of nine goddesses, who embody the arts and inspire creation with their graces through remembered and improvised song and mime, writing, traditional music, and dance. It was not until Hellenistic times that the following systematic set of functions was assigned to them, and even then there was some variation in both their names and their attributes: Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, and Urania. According to Pausanias in the later second century AD, there were originally three Muses, worshipped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia: Aoide, Melete, and Mneme. Together, these three form the complete picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names: Nete, Mese, and Hypate, which are assigned as the names of the three chords of the ancient musical instrument, the lyre. Alternatively, later they were called Cephisso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis, names which characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In a later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized: Thelxinoe, Aoide, Arche, and Melete, said to be daughters of Zeus and Plusia or of Ouranos. One of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓne, Asopṓ, Heptepora, Acheloes, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodea. According to Hesiod's Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, Titan goddess of memory. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the early deities Ouranos and Gaia. Gaia is Mother Earth, an early mother goddess who was worshipped at Delphi from prehistoric times, long before the site was rededicated to Apollo, possibly indicating a transfer to association with him after that time. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and with Pieris. It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the Muses, also known as pegasides, were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the Muses. Classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetes.