Thalia
Goddess of Comedy
Member of the Muses
Roman statue of Thalia from Hadrian's villa , now at the Prado Museum ( Madrid )
Personal information
Parents	Zeus and Mnemosyne
Siblings	Euterpe , Polyhymnia , Urania , Clio , Erato , Calliope , Terpsichore , Melpomene and several paternal half-siblings
Consort	Apollo
Children	the Corybantes

In Greek mythology , Thalia ( / θ ? ? l a? ? / ^{[1] [2]} or / ? θ e? l i ? / ; ^[3] Ancient Greek : Θ?λεια ; "the joyous, the flourishing", from Ancient Greek : θ?λλειν , thallein ; "to flourish, to be verdant"), also spelled Thaleia , was one of the Muses , the goddess who presided over comedy and idyllic poetry . In this context her name means "flourishing", because the praises in her songs flourish through time. ^[4]

Appearance [ edit ]

Thalia was portrayed as a young woman with a joyous air, crowned with ivy, wearing boots and holding a comic mask in her hand. Many of her statues also hold a bugle and a trumpet, or occasionally a shepherd's staff or a wreath of ivy .

Family [ edit ]

Thalia was the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne , the eighth-born of the nine Muses . According to Apollodorus , she and Apollo were the parents of the Corybantes . ^[5]

Gallery [ edit ]

• 
  "David Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy" by Joshua Reynolds (1760). Thalia is pictured left, and Melpomene to the right
• 
  Engraving by Hendrick Goltzius (1558?1617)
• 
  Portrait of Francoise-Marie-Jeanne Picquefeu de Longpre, as Thalia, Muse of Comedy Louis-Michel van Loo (1765?1766)
• 
  (1739)

See also [ edit ]

• Muses in popular culture
  • Thalia Theatre (disambiguation)
• Thalia (Grace)
• Thalia (Nereid)
• Thalia (nymph)

Notes [ edit ]

References [ edit ]

• Apollodorus , Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes , Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press ; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1921. ISBN   0-674-99135-4 . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library .
• Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology , Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN   978-0-631-20102-1 . "Thalia" 1. p. 442 .
• Smith, William ; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology , London (1873). "Thaleia" 1.

External links [ edit ]

• Media related to Thalia at Wikimedia Commons
• Warburg Institute Iconographic Database