Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan is believed to have retired from songwriting, it was revealed today. The 61 year old musician, composer of more than a thousand songs, has auctioned off his muse.

The mood in Dylan chat rooms was dejected. Most interpreted the news as "no more songs from Dylan." Others chose to see it as "no more good songs from Dylan," and likened the situation to his poor form in the eighties.

Dylan's muse was Calliope, the mother of Orpheus. She first sprang to public notice more than three thousand years ago when she inspired Homer, then a young, unknown poet. Their relationship lasted twenty years, and during their time together he wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both are still in print.

After Homer died she moved on, and is believed to have worked with Shakespeare, Dante, Blake, and many other famous names.

Calliope first met Dylan in 1961 at the Brooklyn State Hospital, where she was tending the dying Woody Guthrie. A starry-eyed Dylan arrived to see his folksinging hero, but soon turned his attention to her. Within a year she'd moved in with Dylan, who then started writing the songs that made him famous: "Blowin' In The Wind" and "The Times They Are A Changin'."

Forty years later, for reasons that are still unclear, Dylan ended the relationship and contacted eBay.

"Our rules expressly forbid the sale or purchase of live humans," an official reported. "But Calliope has been around for such a long time that we doubt she is human. At any rate, she can certainly look after herself, and we were led to believe that the online auction was her idea. We looked at it as a test case."

After three weeks of intense bidding, Calliope was sold for $57m. The sale made eBay history, easily outstripping the previous high of $5m paid for a corporate jet.

Both eBay and Dylan have refused to reveal the identity of the buyer, but keen speculation has already begun.