(Μουσαῖος), literary.
1. A semimythological personage, to be classed with Olen, Orpheus, and Pamphus. He was regarded as the author of various poetical compositions, especially as connected with the mystic rites of Demeter at Eleusis, over which the legend represented him as presiding in the time of Heracles. (Diod. 4.25.) He was reputed to belong to the family of the Eumolpidae, being the son of Eumolpus and Selene. (Philochor. apud Schol. ad Arist. Ran. 1065; Diog. Laert. Prooem. 3.) In other variations of the myth he was less definitely called a Thracian. According to other legends he was the son of Orpheus, of whom he was generally considered as the imitator and disciple. (Diod. 4.25; Serv. ad Virg. Aen. 6.667.) Others made him the son of Antiphemus, or Antiophemus, and Helena. (Schol. ad Soph. Oed. Col. 1047; Suid. s. v. Μουσαῖος.) In Aristotle (Mirab. p. 711a.) a wife Deioce is given him; while in the elegiac poem of Hermesianax., quoted by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 597), Antiope is mentioned as his wife or mistress. Suidas gives him a son Eumolpus. The scholiast on Aristophanes mentions an inscription said to have been placed on the tomb of Musaeus at Phalerus. Pausanias (1.25.8) mentions a tradition that the Μουσεῖον in Peiraeus bore that name from having been the place where Musaeus was buried.