Musaeus of Athens (,
Mousaios) was a legendary
polymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet, and musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in
Attica. He composed dedicatory and purificatory
hymns and prose treatises, and oracular responses.
Herodotus reports that, during the reign of
Peisistratus at
Athens, the scholar
Onomacritus collected and arranged the oracles of Musaeus but inserted forgeries of his own devising, later detected by
Lasus of Hermione. The mystic and oracular verses and customs of Attica, especially of
Eleusis, are connected with his name. A
Titanomachia and
Theogonia are also attributed to him by
Gottfried Kinkel.