Who is Clio and What does she have to do with History?

Clio, Muse of History

By now you have noticed the title of this little adventure- Clio’s Parade. But who is Clio and what is this about a parade?

• In Greek mythology Clio (sometimes spelled Kleio) is the muse of history.

•  From the Greek root, her name means to make famous.

History revolves around people and the decisions they make. As historians, when we tell the stories of those people we bring their experiences to light. While presidents, kings, emperors, and the like are already famous for who they are, it is the historian that shapes the legacy. For those everyday people like women on the home front during the Civil War, a lonely soldier in Napoleon’s Grande Armee, or the peasant in communist Russia, historians bring their little known stories to the forefront and, in effect, make them famous. This is why Clio seemed an appropriate beginning.

Now, how does Clio relate to the parade? I’m sure you noticed the elephant on the home page and read Erin’s introduction of why we started the blog. Since we left Gettysburg, this idea of the elephants has continually grown larger and larger. With that in mind, we began searching for various elephant names where we ran across:

• Moumakil from Lord of the Rings

• Heffalumps from Winnie the Pooh

• AT-AT elephant like creatures from Star Wars

None quite had the ring we were looking for. When elephants travel in a group, however, they are referred to as a parade. Thus, Clio’s Parade. Our tagline states, “stomping through history one tale at a time.” Stomping of course relating back to how an elephant walks. Through history is self-explanatory. And tale is a play on an elephants “tail” and the idea that we tell people’s stories. We also want to examine some tales (historical fiction) that we come up with ourselves. There will be scholarly material here as well. In our professional endeavors we always seek to write good and accurate history, but this site is more to take actual scenarios and turn them into interesting tales.

We will recommend some good history reads and some historical fiction you may enjoy, as well as rate history films like the new Lincoln movie coming out in a few weeks. Take a look around, we will have new posts coming out every week. Get involved, tell us what you think, and share us with your friends!

For more information on Clio check out this information from the University of Memphis: http://www.memphis.edu/history/clio.htm