Calliope

Also Known As: Greek Kalliope, “beautiful voice”; also spelled Kalliope
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Calliope is the foremost of the nine Muses, a daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne who gives fine speech to rulers and, in later tradition, presides over epic poetry.
Role in Mythos: She leads her sisters in song, stands beside kings when they judge, and is the mother of the singer Orpheus.
Relation to Humans: Calliope lends her voice to kings and poets, so that a ruler she favours can end a quarrel with words alone. Poets from Hesiod to Virgil called on her by name before attempting their largest subjects.

A king sits in the marketplace with two angry men in front of him and a crowd pressing close. He begins to speak. The words come out soft and steady, the argument unknots, and both men go home thinking they were treated fairly. Hesiod, who describes this scene near the start of his Theogony, is clear about where such a voice comes from. It belongs to Calliope, who walks beside kings worth the name.

She is one of nine sisters. Zeus lay with the Titaness Mnemosyne, who is memory itself, for nine nights in Pieria, and in time she bore nine daughters at one birth not far from the snowy top of Olympus. Hesiod lists them all, and when he reaches the last name he stops to say that this one is the greatest of them. Her name means beautiful voice. A later handbook of myth makes her the eldest as well.

Hesiod met the sisters himself, or says he did, while keeping sheep under Mount Helicon. They gave him a staff of laurel and breathed a voice into him. He does not divide their work. The neat arrangement in which each Muse keeps one art, with history for Clio and the stars for Urania, was settled centuries after him, and when it was, Calliope received the heaviest portion: epic, the long poem of war and wandering. It fit what the old poet had already said. The Muse who stands by kings was given the songs about them.

On an ordinary day she is found where her sisters are, dancing on soft feet around a dark spring on Helicon, or going up to their father’s house in a single moving choir with their voices rising ahead of them. The older vase painters put a lyre in her hands. Later sculptors and mosaic makers preferred a writing tablet and a stylus, or a rolled book, and that is how she is usually picked out from the other eight. No ancient writer troubles to describe her face. What they remember is the sound.

Her sons are better known than she is. By the Thracian king Oeagrus, or by Apollo in other accounts, she bore Orpheus, whose singing moved trees and stones and nearly brought his wife back from the dead. Linus the musician is called her son too, and so is Rhesus, the Thracian king with the white horses, whom she is said to have borne to the river Strymon. A fragment of Pindar adds a son named Ialemus, whose name became a word for a dirge. The geographer Strabo records a claim that she bore the dancing Corybantes to Zeus. Not one of the famous sons lived to be old. Linus was struck dead with his own lyre by the young Heracles, who did not care for music lessons. Rhesus was killed in his sleep on his first night at Troy. Orpheus was torn apart by the women of Thrace.

One account lays that last death at Calliope’s own door. When Aphrodite and Persephone both claimed the beautiful Adonis and neither would give way, Zeus handed the case to her. She ruled as a judge should. Each goddess would have him for half of every year. Persephone accepted. Aphrodite did not forgive it, and the astronomer Hyginus says it was she who stirred the Thracian women to a frenzy until each wanted Orpheus for herself and they pulled him limb from limb. The Muses gathered what was left and buried it at Leibethra, below Olympus. Fair judgements can be expensive.

Her best day in the stories comes from Ovid. The nine daughters of King Pierus, proud of their voices, marched to Helicon and challenged the Muses, with the nymphs of the mountain sitting as judges. One of the mortal sisters sang first and chose to mock the gods, telling how they ran from the monster Typhon and hid in the shapes of animals. Then the Muses put forward a single champion. Calliope stood up with her hair bound in ivy, tried the strings with her thumb, and sang of Ceres searching the world for her stolen daughter. It is a long song and the nymphs did not need long to decide. The losers shouted insults, and in the middle of shouting found feathers pushing out through their arms. They flew off as magpies, still chattering.

She appears once more at a death. In a late Greek epic about the end of the Trojan War, the Muses come to the shore where Achilles lies on his pyre, and it is Calliope who speaks to his mother Thetis. She tells the sea goddess to stop weeping, and gives her reason plainly: she lost a son herself, and she is still a goddess, and she bears it.

Her power is persuasion at its largest scale. She can make a king’s judgement stick without a blow struck, carry a poet through thousands of lines, and win a contest with one song. Plato has the cicadas report to her and to Urania on which mortals have spent their lives in the pursuit of wisdom. Virgil, about to describe the worst of a battle, asks her by name to help him tell it. What she cannot do is alter an outcome. She could give Orpheus his voice and not his life. She could settle a quarrel between goddesses and not escape the grudge. Everything she has is in the telling. She is the daughter of memory, and memory keeps things. It does not bring them back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Calliope in Greek mythology?

Calliope is the foremost of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, a daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Hesiod says she attends kings and gives them persuasive speech. Later tradition made her the Muse of epic poetry.

What is Calliope the Muse of?

Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry. Hesiod does not give the Muses separate arts, and the assignment was fixed centuries later. In art she is shown with a writing tablet and stylus or a scroll.

Who are the children of Calliope?

Calliope is the mother of Orpheus, by the Thracian king Oeagrus or by Apollo. Linus, Rhesus and Ialemus are also called her sons, and Strabo records a claim that she bore the Corybantes to Zeus. Linus, Rhesus and Orpheus all died violently.

What did Calliope decide about Adonis?

Calliope judged the dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone over Adonis and ruled that each goddess would have him for half the year. According to Hyginus, Aphrodite was angered by the decision and drove the women of Thrace to tear apart Calliope’s son Orpheus.

What happened in the contest between Calliope and the Pierides?

The nine daughters of King Pierus challenged the Muses to a singing contest judged by the nymphs of Helicon. In Ovid’s telling Calliope sang for the Muses, choosing the story of Ceres and her stolen daughter, and won. The Pierides insulted the winners and were turned into magpies.