one that

Consumes the fruits of the spacious earth.
(From Simonides.)

And therefore Jove made but one Minerva, one Diana, one Vulcan, but many
Muses. But why there should be nine, and no more nor less, pray acquaint
us; for you, so great a lover of, and so well acquainted with, the
Muses, must certainly have considered this matter. What difficulty is
there in that? replied Herod. The number nine is in everybody's mouth,
as being the first square of the first odd number; and as doubly odd,
since it may be divided into three equal odd numbers. Ammonius with a
smile subjoined: Boldly said; and pray add, that this number is
composed of the two first cubes, one and eight, and according to another
composition of two triangles, three and six, each of which is itself
perfect. But why should this belong to the Muses more than any other of
the gods? For we have nine Muses, but not nine Cereses, nine Minervas or
Dianas. For I do not believe that you take it for a good argument,
that the Muses must be so many, because their mother's name (Mnemosyne)
consists of just so many letters. Herod smiling, and everybody being
silent, Ammonius desired our opinions.

My brother said, that the ancients celebrated but three Muses, and that
to bring proofs for this assertion would be pedantic and uncivil in such
a company. The reason of this number was (not as some say) the three
different sorts of music, the diatonic, the chromatic, and harmonic, nor
those stops that make the intervals nete, mese, and hypate, though
the Delphians gave the Muses this name erroneously, in my opinion,
appropriating it to one science, or rather to a part of one single
science, the harmoniac part of music. But, as I think, the ancients,
reducing all arts and sciences which are executed and performed
by reason or discourse to three heads, philosophy, rhetoric, and
mathematics, accounted them the gifts of three gods, and named them the
Muses. Afterwards, about Hesiod's time, the sciences being better and
more thoroughly looked into, and men subdividing them found that each
science contained three different parts. In mathematics are comprehended
music, arithmetic, and geometry; in philosophy are logic, ethics, and
physics. In rhetoric, they say the first part was demonstrative or
encomiastic, the second deliberative, the third judicial. None of all
which they believed to be without a god or a Muse or some superior power
for its patron, and did not, it is