probable, make the Muses equal in
number to these divisions, but found them to be so. Now, as you may
divide nine into three threes, and each three into as many units;
so there is but one rectitude of reason, which is employed about the
highest truth, and which belongs to the whole in common, while each of
the three kinds of science is assigned three Muses, and each of these
has her distinct faculty assigned to her, which she disposes and orders.
And I do not think the poets and astrologers will find fault with us for
passing over their professions in silence, since they know, as well as
we, that astrology is comprehended in geometry, and poetry in music.

As soon as he had said this, Trypho the physician subjoined: How hath
our art offended you, that you have shut the Museum against us? And
Dionysius of Melite added: Sir, you have a great many that will side
with you in the accusation; for we farmers think Thalia to be ours,
assigning her the care of springing and budding seeds and plants. But
I interposing said: Your accusation is not just; for you have bountiful
Ceres, and Bacchus who (as Pindar phraseth it) increaseth the trees, the
chaste beauty of the fruits; and we know that Aesculapius is the patron
of the Physicians, and they make their address to Apollo as Paean, but
never as the Muses' leader. All men (as Homer says) stand in need of the
gods, but all stand not in need of all. But I wonder Lamprias did not
mind what the Delphians say in this matter; for they affirm that the
Muses amongst them were not named so either from the strings or sounds
in music; but the universe being divided into three parts, the first
portion was of the fixed stars, the second of the planets, the third of
those things that are under the concave of the moon; and all these are
ordered according to harmonical proportions, and of each portion a
Muse takes care; Hypate of the first, Nete of the last, and Mese in the
middle, combining as much as possible, and turning about mortal things
with the gods and earthly with heavenly. And Plato intimates the same
thing under the names of the Fates, calling one Atropos, the other
Lachesis, and the other Clotho. For he hath committed the revolutions of
the eight spheres to so many Sirens, and not Muses.

Then Menephylus the Peripatetic subjoined: The Delphians' opinion hath
indeed somewhat of probability in it; but Plato is absurd in committing
the eternal and divine revolutions not to the Muses b