Goddess of the Week: Clio

On this gloomy President's Day, I bring you Clio, the Greek muse of History.  She and her eight sister muses are the patron goddesses of the arts and learning.  They are the children of Zeus and Mnemosyne (a Titan and the goddess of memory), who managed to spend nine nights together without Zeus's jealous wife Hera finding them.  For each night they spent together they produced one daughter.

It is interesting that while Clio and her sisters are famous for their ability to inspire artists and storytellers, there are not a lot of stories about the muses themselves.  They are sort of like the black holes of mythology.  Everything points to them, but you can't really ever see them for themselves.  

Did you know that in my former life I was a historian?  It's true.  Thus, I like Clio, even though I never feel like I can get a handle on her.  But that's history isn't it?  You can never really get a handle on it.  Just when you think you know the story, the characters change right out from under you.  Just when you think George Washington is about wooden teeth and cheery trees, you realize he's about slaves at Mount Vernon and inequality in the age of liberty.  Just when you think Lincoln is about stove-top hats and freeing the slaves you realize he's about biracialism in the twenty-first century and little African-American girls living in the White House.  

A Roman poet wrote, "Begin thou, unforgetting Clio, for all the ages are in thy keeping, and all the storied annals of the past."  History may be in Clio's keeping, but it is entrusted to us to tell.  And he who writes the stories gets to choose the cast.  So...write your story.  Don't trust it to another soul.