1–7 Proem: invocation of the Muse and statement of the poet's theme – Akhilleus' wrath and its disastrous consequences

1 The goddess of 1 is the Muse; so also in the opening of the Odyssey, ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα – ‘Tell, me, Muse, of the man…’ (similarly at HyAphr 1, HyHerm 1). Muse or Muses are used with little distinction in such cases, compare the invocation at the beginning of the Catalogue of Ships at 2.484 (and 3X elsewhere), ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ̕ ἔχουσαι; also the opening verses of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. An initial invocation to the Muse or Muses is conventional for epic poems and for the literary kind of hymn, as is the request to ‘sing of’ – that means, through the poet – the main theme which is to be outlined. ἀοιδοί, singers, regularly claimed to be inspired and taught by the Muses, the goddesses of music, dance and song who were imagined as daughters of Zeus and Mnemosune, Memory, and as dwelling on Mt Helikon or in Pieria close to Mt Olumpos. Hesiod's account of his own inspiration by them as he herded sheep on Mt Helikon is the fullest evidence (see Theog. 22–34), but Homer in the Odyssey shows Demodokos the Phaeacian singer and Phemios, court singer in Ithake, as similarly inspired.