THE PLANETS 109 



by the human ear if it was rendered insensible by extreme 

 familiarity, as it is perpetual, and men are accustomed to it 

 from childhood."^ The harmonic part of the Pythagorean 

 doctrine of numbers thus became connected with the figura- 

 tive representation of the Cosmos precisely in the Platonic 

 Timeeus ; for " cosmogony is to Plato the work of the union 

 of opposite first causes, brought about by harmony."! Ho 

 attempted, moreover, to illustrate the tones of the universe in 

 an agreeable picture, by attributing to each of the planetaiy 

 spheres a syren, who, supported by the stern daughters of jM^e- 

 cessity, the three Fates, maintain the eternal revolution of the 

 world's axis. "'I Such a representation of the Syrens, in whose 

 place the Muses are sometimes substituted as the choir of 

 heaven, has been, in many cases, handed down to us in an- 

 tique monuments, especially in carved stones. Mention is 

 constantly made of the harmony of the spheres, although gen 

 erally reproachfully, throughout the writings of Christian an- 

 tiquity, and all those of the Middle Ages, from Basil the Great 

 to Thomas Aquinas and Petrus Alliacus.§ 



* The Pythagoreans affirm, in order to justify the reality of the tones 

 produced by the revolution of the spheres, that hearing takes place only 

 where there is an alternation of sound and silence. — Aristot,, De CcbIo, 

 ii., 9, p. 290, No. 24-30, Bekker. The inaudibility of the spheral music 

 is also accounted for by its overpowering the senses. — Cicero, De Rep., 

 vi., 18. Aristotle himself calls the Pythagorean tone-myth pleasing 

 and ingenious (KOfj.-)pu)g koI -ixepLTTug), but untrue (1. c. No. 12-15). 



t Bockh, in Philolaus, p. 90. 



X Plato, De Rcpnblica, x., p. 617 {Davis's translation, Bohn^s Class. 

 Lib., p. 307). He estimates the planetary distances according to two 

 entirely difterent progressions, one by doubling, the other by tripling, 

 from which results the series 1. 2. 3. 4. 9. 8. 27. It is the same series 

 which is found in the Timeeus, where the subject of the arithmetical 

 division of the world — spirit (p. 35, Steph., Davis,' s trans., Bohn's Class. 

 Lib.), which Demiurgus propounds, is treated of. Plato had, indeed, 

 considered the two geometrical progressions 1. 2. 4. 8 and 1. 3. 9. 27 

 together, and thus alternately taken each successive number from one 

 of the two series, whence resulted the above-mentioned succession 1. 



2. 3. 4. 9 Compare Bockh in the Studien von Daub und Creu- 



zer, bd. iii., p. 34-43 ; Martin, Etudes sur le Tim^e, torn, i., p. 384, and 

 tom. ii., p. 64. (Compare also Prevost, Sur VAme d'apres Platon, in the 

 Mim. deV Acad, de Berlin for 1802, p. 90 and 97 ; the same in the Bibli- 

 otheqne Britannique, Sciences et Arts, tom. xxxvii..ll08, p. 153.) 



^ See the acute work of Professor Ferdinand Piper, Von der Harmo- 

 nie der Spkdren, 1850, p. 12-18. The supposed relation of the seven 

 vowels of the old Egyptian language to the seven planets, and Gustav 

 Beyffarth's conception, already disproved by Zoega's and Tolken's in- 

 vestigations, of the astrological hymns, rich in vowels, of the Egyptian 

 priests, according to passages of Pseudo-Demetrius Fhaleereus (perhap» 

 Oemetrius of Alexandria), an epigram of Eusebius and a Gnostic mau 



