“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 “Occultation of Orion”—
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.
Byron, in his “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,” alludes to the story of Milo:
“He who of old would rend the oak Deemed not of the rebound; Chained by the trunk he vainly broke, Alone, how looked he round!”
The Egyptians acknowledged as the highest deity Amun, afterwards called Zeus, or Jupiter Ammon. Amun manifested himself in his word or will, which created Kneph and Athor, of different sexes. From Kneph and Athor proceeded Osiris and Isis. Osiris was worshipped as the god of the sun, the source of warmth, life, and fruitfulness, in addition to which he was also regarded as the god of the Nile, who annually visited his wife, Isis (the Earth), by means of an inundation. Serapis or Hermes is sometimes represented as identical with Osiris, and sometimes as a distinct divinity, the ruler of Tartarus and god of medicine. Anubis is the guardian god, represented with a dog’s head, emblematic of his character of fidelity and watchfulness. Horus or Harpocrates was the son of Osiris. He is represented seated on a Lotus flower, with his finger on his lips, as the god of Silence.