Musaeus
（
Μουσαῖος).
1.
A mythical singer, seer, and priest, who appears especially in Attic legends. He is said to
have lived in pre-Homeric times, and to have been the son of Selené and Orpheus or
Linus or Eumolpus. Numerous oracular sayings, hymns, and chants of dedication and
purification were ascribed to him which had been collected, and also interpolated, by
Onomacritus, in the time of the Pisistratidae. His tomb was shown at Athens on the Museum
Hill, southwest of the Acropolis (Pausan. i. 22, x. 9). See
Eberhard, De Pampho
et Musaeo (1864).
2.
A grammarian and Greek poet, who, in the beginning of the sixth century after Christ,
wrote, in imitation of
Nonnus (q.v.), a short epic
of love, on the subject of Hero and Leander, which shows intense warmth of feeling, and has
touches that are almost modern. It is edited by Passow
(Leipzig, 1810), Schaefer
(Leipzig, 1825), and Dilthey
(Bonn, 1874). See Schwabe,
De Musaeo Nonni Imitatore (Tübingen, 1876).
