The Druids among the Celts enquired with the greatest minuteness into the Pythagorean philosophy, Zamolxis, Pythagoras’ slave, a Thracian by race, being for them the author of this discipline. He after Pythagoras’ death travelled into their country and became as far as they were concerned the founder of this philosophy.[153] The Celts glorify the Druids as prophets and as knowing the future because they foretell to them some things by the ciphers and numbers of the Pythagoric art. On the principles of which same art we shall not be silent, since some men have ventured to introduce heresies constructed from them. Druids, however, also make use of magic arts. [Sidenote: p. 49.] 23. _About Hesiod._[154] But Hesiod the poet says that he, too, heard thus from the Muses about Nature. The Muses, however, are the daughters of Zeus. For Zeus having from excess of desire companied with Mnemosyne for nine days and nights consecutively, she conceived these nine in her single womb, receiving one every night. Now Hesiod invokes the nine Muses from Pieria, that is from Olympus, and prays them to teach him:[155] “How first the gods and earth became; The rivers and th’ immeasureable sea High-raging in its foam: the glittering stars; The wide-impending heaven; ... Say how their treasures,[156] how their honours each Allotted shared: how first they held abode On many-caved Olympus:--this declare [Sidenote: p. 50.] Ye Muses! dwellers of the heavenly mount From the beginning; say who first arose? “First Chaos was, next ample-bosomed Earth, The seat eternal and immoveable Of deathless gods, who still the Olympian height Snow-topt inhabit. Third in hollow depth Of the vast ground, expanded wide above The gloomy Tartarus, Love then arose Most beauteous of immortals: he at once Of every god and every mortal man Unnerves the limbs; dissolves the wiser breast By reason steel’d, and quells the very soul. “From Chaos, Erebus and sable Night... From Night arose the Sunshine and the Day[157] Whom she with dark embrace of Erebus Commingling bore. “Her first-born Earth produced Of like immensity,[158] the starry Heaven: That he might sheltering compass her around On every side, and be for evermore To the blest gods a mansion unremoved. “Next the high hills arose, the pleasant haunts Of goddess-nymphs, who dwell among the glens Of mountains. With no aid of tender love [Sidenote: p. 51.] Gave she to birth the sterile Sea, high-swol’n In raging foam; and Heaven-embraced, anon She teemed with Ocean, rolling in deep whirls His vast abyss of waters