Erato- Greek GodDeity"Muse of Love Poetry"
Also known as: Ἐρατώ and Eratō
Description
Muse of love poetry, named for desire itself. When Apollonius of Rhodes needed to tell how Medea fell for Jason, he invoked Erato — for she shared in Aphrodite's power and knew the spells that love casts over unwed hearts.
Mythology & Lore
Daughter of Memory
Zeus lay nine nights with the Titaness Mnemosyne on Mount Pieria, and she bore nine daughters — the Muses. They settled on Helicon, where they danced by night around the violet-dark spring of Hippocrene. Erato was among them, and her art was love poetry.
Stand Beside Me, Erato
When Apollonius of Rhodes reached the third book of his Argonautica — the book in which Medea falls in love with Jason — he invoked Erato by name: stand beside me, he asked, and tell how love brought Jason the Golden Fleece, for you share in Aphrodite's power and beguile unwed maidens with your love-charms. It was Erato, not Calliope, whom Apollonius called on to sing this part of the epic.
The story she inspired was one of ruin through desire. Medea, granddaughter of the Sun, was struck by Eros's arrow and could not sleep, could not stop herself from betraying her father and her homeland for a foreign prince she barely knew. She drugged the sleepless dragon and helped Jason yoke the fire-breathing bulls. Then she fled Colchis with him, cutting her own brother Apsyrtus to pieces to slow their pursuers.
Virgil also invoked Erato by name at the midpoint of the Aeneid, where the contest for Lavinia's hand plunges Latium into war.
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