"Who gives permission... to these soul-enervating daughters of the theatre, to approach this disconsolate person? So far are they from remedying his woes by any art of theirs, that they nourish them by their soft and enfeebling poisons. It is they who teach their votaries to choke and destroy, by the pernicious brambles of the passions, the most abundant and useful crops of reason. They may... sooth and indulge the mind in its grief; but they cannot restore it to comfort. If by your deceitful caresses... you had seduced one of the profane, as you are daily wont to do, small would have been my concern: I should not thereby have been injured; for it is only in the sons of wisdom I am interested. But whom do you attack? One who has been trained up from his infancy in the principles of Zeno and the Academy.——Be gone! ye baneful sirens, with your strains that enchant to destruction. Be gone! leave him to me; it is only my sober muse that can effectuate his ."
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Note: Since the muse has sometimes been associated with geometry and meditation, perhaps she was not included as baneful, and was allowed to stay?
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Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy
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