Melpomene is one of the nine Muses, the daughters of great Zeus whom Memory bore in Pieria. Hesiod's catalogue sets her name in the line of sisters — Clio and Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene and Terpsichore — and Pseudo-Apollodorus lists her third among the nine Muses borne by Mnemosyne to Zeus. Her name is built from the Greek verb to sing or celebrate in song, so that 'Melpomene' means the Songstress, she who sings; in the earliest sources she is simply one of the choir of song, not yet bound to any single art.2Hesiod · Pseudo-Apollodorus — Theogony 75–79; Bibliotheca 1.3.1

Pseudo-Apollodorus makes Melpomene the mother of the Sirens by the river-god Achelous, the bird-women whose song lured sailors to their death; in the Epitome he names the three as Pisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepia, daughters of Achelous and Melpomene, one of the Muses. Hyginus follows the same descent, calling the Sirens daughters of the River Achelous and the Muse Melpomene, women above and birds below, fated to live only so long as no mortal who heard them passed by.3Pseudo-Apollodorus · Hyginus — Bibliotheca 1.3.4, Epitome 7.18; Fabulae 125, 141⚖Told differently in other tellings — change the lens on the card

The Sirens' mother is disputed. Apollonius of Rhodes gives them instead to Melpomene's sister Terpsichore, who bore them united with Achelous and set them on the flowering isle Anthemoessa. The two Muses thus stand as rival mothers of the same daughters, and the contradiction is preserved rather than resolved.4Apollonius of Rhodes — Argonautica 4.892–896⚖Told differently in other tellings — change the lens on the card

Melpomene's familiar role as the Muse of tragedy, mask in hand, belongs to a later Roman systematization that parceled out one art to each of the nine sisters. The early sources know no such division of labour: in Hesiod and the mythographers the Muses share the gift of song as one chorus, and Melpomene's tragic mask is a learned assignment laid over the older, undivided 'songstress'.5Hesiod — Theogony 1–115