Melpomene ("the singer") was the Muse of tragedy — the inspiration of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and the dramatists who came after. Her attributes in art were the tragic mask and the buskin (the elevated boot worn by the tragic actor).
Before thisEuterpe
Next on the wallPolyhymnia
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 77; the assignment to tragedy is late and reflects the Hellenistic codification.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Parent ofThe Sirensof the Muse Terpsichore (or, in other accounts, of Melpomene or Calliope)
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Margins and the Monsters. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.