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Pausanias preserves a unique account of the worship of the Muses on Mount Helicon. The sons of Aloeus (the Aloades), he says, co-founded Ascra and were first to designate the mountain as sacred to the Muses; they instituted sacrifices and honoured three Muses named Melete, Mneme and Aoide; then a Macedonian, Pieros, came to Thespiae, changed the names, and established the canonical cult of nine.1
As with any mythical <cult> history, particularly one that deals with <previous ownership> Pausanias' account raises questions about the objects of cult, the claimed founders, and the relative dating of its various phases.2 Did this Muse-trio exist as a cult, and if so when? How much <historicity> is there in the Aloades' association with Helicon? And do these elements reflect long past events, or circumstances obtaining when the myth was first enunciated, or some combination of the two?3 The Aloades themselves are better known as the brothers who grew prodigiously large and at the age of nine aspired to pile Pelion on Ossa and Olympus, assault the gods in their heaven, subvert the Olympian order, and rape virgin goddesses.4 It is not easy to see how these extraordinary creatures might have associated with Muses, and the approach to be adopted in this study will assume the possibility, even likelihood, of an extended process of territorial association between the Aloades, Ascra and Helicon which provided a context for the myth of first worship and led towards it.
As will be seen, the Aloades (Otus and Ephialtes) were honoured as heroes. They were also identified in positive ways with Aeolian ethnic and territorial interests and were not simply the hubristic monsters so prominent in the mainstream tradition. Moreover, the competitive intrusion of a northern eponymous hero is consistent with other evidence, to be considered later, for ethnic tensions around the Heliconian cult. The myth thus offers an opportunity to explore wider issues of culture, ethnicity and territoriality from a musical perspective. It also has to do with three non-canonical Muse names which deserve fuller analysis than they have received, as a basis for judgments about technical affinities, edu cational influence and dating. Detailed analysis of a rich and resonant musical myth will, it is hoped, help illuminate the workings of the...