Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse paintings of Melpoméne, she is represented with a tragic mask and also often holds in her other hand a knife or club. In Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who had eight other daughters, Melpoméne's sisters and the eight other muses are: Calliope, muse of epic poetry; Clio, muse of history; Euterpe, muse of flute playing; Terpsichore, muse of dancing; Erato, muse of erotic poetry; Thalia muse of comedy; Polyhymnia, muse of hymns; and Urania, muse of astronomy. Reynolds was inspired not only by Sarah Siddons' extreme talent to embody the tragic heroine in Macbeth, but
The Muse in Arms poetry from the trenches". The introduction by Osborn has been described as articulating the "appallingly anachronistic concept of war as a game". In his 2007 work, Sillars draws further attention to the imagery used in the introduction by Osborn, and concludes that "The Muse in Arms" and similar anthologies of that period of the war used poetry to locate the war "within a spiritual landscape that makes mystical the English countryside by endowing it with heroic virtues". The symbolic meaning of the anthology and the works it contains has also been examined, with Haughton (2007) describing the title of the