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
Aaron (given name) had no direct equivalent in Greek, when Jewish scriptures were translated by Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria around 200 BCE to form the septuagint, so these translators used a pair of Greek alpha letters to approximate the same sound, "Ααρών". This was translated again by St. Jerome from the Greek to the Latin Vulgate as "Aaron" in the fourth century CE. It is thought that the Greeks and Romans would pronounce Aaron similarly to the Hebrew, as the Catholic Latin pronunciation is still defined this way. The English pronunciation of the biblical Aaron's name was derived by anglicising the Latin during