312 Dr DONALDSON, ON PLATO'S COSMICAL SYSTEM 



and Charites (Pausan, ii. 17, § 4). And the more ancient statue of the same goddess, set 

 up at Coroneia in Boeotia by Pythodorus, represented Juno as holding statuettes of the 

 Sirens in one of her hands {(pepei ^e eTri tjj X^'P' 2et|0»Ji/as, Pausan. ix. 34, ^ 3). That they 

 represent the music of the spheres is sufficiently obvious, and this presumed music, which 

 s a result of the numerical coincidences already discussed, is represented as the vocal utter- 

 ances of a concert of heavenly beings, in accordance with a personification found in the poetry 

 of all ages. In the book of Job we read (xxxviii, 7) that " the morning-stars sang together, 

 and all the sons of God shouted for joy." And Shakspere in a passage, to which I have 

 already referred, and which Mr Hallam has quoted (Lit. of Europe, iii. p. 147) as illustrating 

 Campanella's theory of the sensibility of all created beings, has distinctly, in this as in other 

 passages, given us an echo of the words of Plato {Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. l): 



"There's not the smallest orb, that thou behold'st, 

 But in his motion like an angel sings, 

 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims : 

 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 

 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 

 Doth grossly close us in, wo cannot hear it." 



Milton has imitated this in his Arcades, where he distinctly alludes to the words of 



Plato' : 



" But else in deep of night, when drowsiness 

 Hath lock'd up mortal sight, then listen I 

 To the celestial Sirens' harmony. 

 That sit upon the nine infolded spheres. 

 And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 

 And turn the adamantine spindle round, 

 On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 

 Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, 

 To lull the daughters of Necessity, 

 And keep unsteady nature to her law, 

 And the low world in measur'd motion draw 

 After the heav'nly tune, which none can hear 

 Of human mould with gross unpurged ear." 



We should have expected perhaps that the personification in the passage before us would have 

 given us Muses instead of (Siren*. And Plutarch seems to suppose that Plato really meant the 

 Muses. In one passage {Sympos. ix. 14, p. 1082, Wyttenb.) he says that Plato seems to him 

 ePrjSXwynevws evravQa koi toj Moi/cray ^etprjvas ovo/xd^eii', "contrary to usage to have here 

 named the Muses Sirens." And in another passage {de Animce Procreatione, 32, p. 190, Wyt- 

 tenb.) he says that by the eight Sirens Plato meant the eight Muses, who dealt with heavenly 

 things, it being the province of the ninth to compose by her strains the anomalies and disturbances 

 of this lower world. It seems to me that Plato preferred the Sirens to the Muses for an 

 etymological reason of his own. In the Thecetetus (p. 153 c, d) he had referred to the line 

 of Homer {11. ix. 17): aeip^v -^^pvcreiriv e^ ovpavoOef Kpenaaavre^, as denoting the Sun 

 which binds all things together. And as the Sirens represent the eight strings of the 



' See also hris paper De Sphararum Co/icentu, Prose. Work-i, p, 84(i. 



