Pierus

Pierus is the name of two figures in Greek myth. The better known was a rich Macedonian of Pella, father of the nine Pierides, the girls who challenged the Muses to a singing contest and were turned into magpies. The other, a son of Magnes, was the lover of the Muse Clio and, in Apollodorus, the father of Hyacinthus.

Pierus of Pella and the Pierides

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses the Muse Urania tells Athena that Pierus was rich in the fields of Pella, and that his wife was Euippe of Paeonia. Euippe called on Lucina, the goddess of childbirth, nine times and bore nine daughters (Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.300–304). The nine daughters are the Pierides.

The Contest with the Muses

Proud of their number, the nine sisters travelled through the cities of Thessaly and Achaea and challenged the Muses: if the Muses lost, they would leave the spring of Medusa’s horse (Hippocrene) and Aganippe; if the Pierides lost, they would leave the plains of Emathia as far as the snowy Paeonians. Nymphs were chosen as judges and swore by their rivers (Metamorphoses 5.302–317).

The first of the Pierides sang a song of the war of the gods and the giants, belittling the gods, and told how Typhoeus drove the gods in flight to Egypt, where they hid in animal shapes. Calliope, chosen to sing for the Muses, replied with a song of Demeter and Persephone, and the nymphs gave the victory to the Muses (Metamorphoses 5.318–331, 5.337–340, 5.662–664).

Transformed into Magpies

When the defeated sisters abused the goddesses, the Muses said that they would punish them. As the girls laughed and began to threaten the goddesses with violent hands, feathers sprang from their fingernails and their arms were covered with plumage. They became magpies, and Ovid says that they kept their old chatter and their love of talking (Metamorphoses 5.664–678).

Pierus and the Muses at Thespiae

Pausanias, in his account of Boeotia, says that a Macedonian named Pierus, after whom the mountain in Macedonia was named, came to Thespiae and established nine Muses with the names they now have. He adds that some said Pierus himself had nine daughters with the same names as the goddesses, and that the beings the Greeks called children of the Muses were really sons of the daughters of Pierus (Description of Greece 9.29.3–4). In the same account he says that some believed Orpheus to be the son of the Muse Calliope, but that the truth was that his mother was a daughter of Pierus (Description of Greece 9.30.4).

Pierus, Son of Magnes

Apollodorus tells a different story of a second Pierus. Clio, one of the Muses, fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes, because Aphrodite was angry with her. Clio had mocked the goddess for loving Adonis. By Pierus she bore Hyacinthus, whom Thamyris loved (he was the first to love a male), and whom Apollo later loved and killed by accident with a throw of a discus (Library 1.3.3). Apollodorus gives a different father for Hyacinthus elsewhere: in his account of Sparta he is the son of Amyclas and Diomede (Library 3.10.3).

Pierus Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.294–678; Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3, 3.10.3; Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.29.3–4, 9.30.4.

See Also: Pierides, Muses, Clio, Calliope, Hyacinthus, Apollo, Orpheus