ONT Re: Excisions, Excuses, Exercises, Exergues, Exorabilities, Exorcisms, Exordia, Experiments, Exquisitions

[Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>]

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| Now when she saw the Muses of poetry standing by my bed,
| helping me to find words for my grief, she was disturbed
| for a moment, and then cried out with fiercely blazing eyes:
| "Who let these theatrical tarts in with this sick man?  Not only
| have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they
| make it worse.  These are they who choke the rich harvest of the
| fruits of reason with the barren thorns of passion.  They accustom
| a man's mind to his ills, not rid him of them.  If your enticements
| were distracting merely an unlettered man, as they usually do, I should
| not take it so seriously -- after all, it would do no harm to us in our
| task -- but to distract this man, reared on a diet of Eleatic and Academic
| thought!  Get out, you Sirens, beguiling men straight to their destruction!
| Leave him to 'my' Muses to care for and restore to health."  Thus upbraided,
| that company of the Muses dejectedly hung their heads, confessing their shame
| by their blushes, and dismally left my room.  I myself, since my sight was
| so dimmed with tears that I could not clearly see who this woman was of
| such commanding authority, was struck dumb, my eyes cast down;  and
| I went on waiting in silence to see what she would do next.  Then
| she came closer and sat on the end of my bed, and seeing my face
| worn with weeping and cast down with sorrow, she bewailed my
| mind's confusion bitterly in these verses:  ...
|
| Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius, c.480-524 A.D.),
|'The Consolation of Philosophy', Translation by S.J. Tester,
| New Edition, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard/Heinemann, 1973.

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