“Look, Jessica, see how the
floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines
of bright gold!
There’s not the smallest
orb that thou behold’st
But in his motion like an
angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed
cherubim;
Such harmony is in immortal
souls!
But whilst this muddy vesture
of decay
Doth grossly close it in we
cannot hear it.”
—Merchant of Venice.
The spheres were conceived to be crystalline or glassy fabrics arranged over one another like a nest of bowls reversed. In the substance of each sphere one or more of the heavenly bodies was supposed to be fixed, so as to move with it. As the spheres are transparent we look through them and see the heavenly bodies which they contain and carry round with them. But as these spheres cannot move on one another without friction, a sound is thereby produced which is of exquisite harmony, too fine for mortal ears to recognize. Milton, in his “Hymn on the Nativity,” thus alludes to the music of the spheres:
“Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears
(If ye have power
to charm our senses so);
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the base
of Heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full concert with
the angelic symphony.”
Pythagoras is said to have invented the lyre.
Our own poet
Longfellow, in “Verses to a Child,” thus
relates the story:
“As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith’s
door,
And hearing the hammers as
they smote
The anvils with a different
note,
Stole from the varying tones
that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding
wire,
And formed the seven-chorded
lyre.”
See also the same poet’s “Occupation of Orion”—
“The Samian’s great Aeolian lyre.”
SYBARIS AND CROTONA
Sybaris, a neighboring city to Crotona, was as celebrated for luxury and effeminacy as Crotona for the reverse. The name has become proverbial. J. R. Lowell uses it in this sense in his charming little poem “To the Dandelion”:
“Not in mid June the golden
cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like,
warm ravishment
In the white lily’s
breezy tent
(His conquered Sybaris) than
I when first
From the dark green thy yellow
circles burst.”
A war arose between the two cities, and Sybaris was conquered and destroyed. Milo, the celebrated athlete, led the army of Crotona. Many stories are told of Milo’s vast strength, such as his carrying a heifer of four years old upon his shoulders and afterwards eating the whole of it in a single day. The mode of his death is thus related: As he was passing through a forest he saw the trunk of a tree which had been partially split open by wood-cutters, and attempted to rend it further; but the wood closed upon his hands and held him fast, in which state he was attacked and devoured by wolves.