Note 150 — THE THEOGONY.

Bare the nine maids.] The origin of verse itself, which is to be sought in the necessity of some mechanical help for the memory at an æra when letters were not invented, and every thing depended on oral tradition, obviously accounts for the fiction of memory being the mother of the Muses. But there is a farther reason. The ancient temples were the depositaries of all traditionary knowledge. We are told by Homer that the voice of the Syrens was enchanting, but their knowledge of the past equally so. The Syrens appear to have been merely priestesses of one of this description of temples, which stood in Sicily, and was erected on the sea-shore, answering also the purpose of a lighthouse. The rites of the temple consisted partly of hymns chanted by young and beautiful women to the sound of harps and flutes: and it was their office to entangle by their allurements such strangers as touched upon the coast: who were instantly seized by the priests and sacrificed to the solar god. The Syrens are described as the daughters of Calliope, Melpomene, and Terpsichore; three of the Muses: they were in fact the same with the Muses. These temples were sacred colleges: sciences were taught there: in particular music and astronomy. The transition was easy from the young priestesses of these temples, to blooming goddesses who presided over history, poetry, &c. See the “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”