Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/90

 The Fountain of Hippocrene was the result of an almost unbelievable exhibition of strength which occurred, as the story goes, at the time that the nine Muses and the nine daughters of Pierus engaged in a musical contest on Mount Helicon. When the nine daughters of Pierus began to sing, the heavens scowled and grew dark, but when the nine Muses lifted their voices in song, the skies grew gold with sunlight, the rivers stopped spellbound in their courses and Mount Helicon rose skyward in sheer delight. Neptune, observing the mountain, advised Pegasus to stop its ascension by kicking it with his hoof. The winged steed kicked and not only quenched the rising enthusiasm of Helicon, but caused the waters of Hippocrene to burst forth from the very crest of a vast rock. Poets were not long in discovering that a draught of these sparkling waters fired their minds with divine inspiration, and the beauty in their souls grew like flowers into poems which stayed fresh and fair through all succeeding centuries. No wonder modern poets sigh

Twenty "stadia" below the Fountain lay the Grove of the Muses, situated in a pleasant hollow, while below this Grove, at the foot of Helicon, was the village of Ascra, the residence of Hesiod, and the earliest seat of poetry in Greece. One can imagine that the poets made frequent trips up the two miles or so that brought them to the Fountain of the Horse. In modern times, Hippocrene has been identified with a fine spring at Makariotissa.

The limpid spring of Pirene on the citadel of Corinth was also opened by a blow from the winged horse's foot. The water from Pirene was in later days conveyed down the hill by subterranean conduits into a marble basin made especially to hold it. Pegasus