Book 9
14.6
It is true, I do not approve what he says; but Plato seems to me, as he hath strangely and unaccountably called the axes spindles and distaffs, and the stars whirls, so to have named the Muses Sirens, as delivering divine things to the ghosts below, as Ulysses in Sophocles says of the Sirens, I next to Phorcus’s daughters came, Who fix the sullen laws below. Eight of the Muses take care of the spheres, and one of all about the earth. The eight who govern the motions of the spheres maintain the harmony of the planets with the fixed stars and one another. But that one who looks after the place betwixt the earth and moon and takes care of mortal things, by means of speech and song introduceth persuasion, assisting our natural consent to community and agreement, and giveth men as much harmony, grace, and order as is possible for them to receive; introducing this persuasion to smooth and quiet our disturbances, and as it were to recall our wandering desires out of the wrong way, and to set us in the right path. But, as Pindar says, Whom Jove abhors, he starts to hear The Muses sounding in his ear. Pindar, Pyth. I. 25.
