In ancient Greek culture of all periods, the notion of kleos is linked in a fundamental way to the poet's voice, and no adequate discussion of the poet's voice could ignore this topic. I will translate kleos by ‘fame’, ‘glory’ or ‘renown’, but some further glossing of this complex term is immediately necessary. Kleos is etymologically and semantically related to the verb kluo ‘I hear’ – kleos is ‘that which is heard’, ‘a report’, even ‘rumour’. So Telemachus, when he returns to Ithaca, asks Eumaeus for the kleos from town (16.461). Kleos is applied to what people talk (of), and an object like Nestor's shield has a ‘kleos which reaches heaven’ (Il. 8.192), and heroes' armour is often described as kluta, ‘with kleos’, ‘talked of’. ‘Things, places and persons acquire kleos as they acquire an identity in the human world, as stories are told about them.’ A good example of this sense of kleos in the context of (the representation of) poetic performance – an example which also shows how the connotations of the term move inevitably towards an idea of ‘glory’, ‘reputation’ – can be seen in the invocation of the Muses before the catalogue of the ships in the Iliad (Il. 2.485–6):