For the ancient philosophers, music was a tool to perfect the soul.

"Pythagoras conceived that the first attention that should be given to men should be addressed to the
senses, as when one perceives beautiful figures and forms, or hears beautiful rhythms and melodies.
Consequently he laid down that the first erudition was that which subsists through music’s melodies
and rhythms, and from these he obtained remedies of human manners and passions, and restored the
pristine harmony of the faculties of the soul. Moreover, he devised medicines calculated to repress
and cure the diseases of both bodies and souls. There is also, by heavens something which deserves to
be mentioned above all: namely, that for his disciples he arranged and adjusted what might be called
apparatus and massage, divinely contriving mingling of certain diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic
melodies through which he easily switched and circulated the passions of the soul in a contrary
direction, whenever they had accumulated recently, irrationally or clandestinely such as sorrow, rage,
pity, over-emulation, fear, manifold desires, angers, appetites, pride, collapses, or spasms. Each of
those he corrected by the use of virtue, attempering them through appropriate melodies, as if through
some salutary medicine." From Iamblichus.

King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us; what is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it.

Socrates, Second Alcibiades, 143

The tetractys is a Pythagorean sacred symbol. It has many applications and can be understood in metaphysical terms. But it can also be interpreted musically.

You have 1 at the top, then 2, then 3, then 4. We can interpret these numbers as the following ratios: 2/1, 3/2, 4/3. These correspond to harmonic ratios that can be expressed respectively as the following musical intervals: the octave, the fifth, and the fourth.

Therefore, you can play the tetractys on a keyboard or a guitar or the like. The notes of the tetractys are E, E (octave lower), A, E (another octave lower).

You can then construct a "scale" from this. I will not go into the details of that here. But the important point is that you can play the tetractys, and the resulting "scale" is essentially what is now called the Phrygian mode. Remember, the ancients taught that music is (literally) medicine for the soul.

Below I will post a short improvised example. The "bells" are playing the tetractys.

How angry you would be if someone handed over your body to just any person who happened to meet you! Are you not ashamed, then, when you hand over your mind to just any person you happen to meet, such that when they abuse you, you are upset and troubled?

Epictetus, The Handbook, 28

“Vessels containing water, perirranteria, are set up at the entrances to the sanctuaries, like the fonts of holy water in Roman Catholic churches; everyone who enters dips his hand in the vessel and sprinkles himself with water. ... The purifying power of fire is joined to the power of water when a log is taken from the altar fire, dipped in water, and used to sprinkle the sanctuary, altar, and participants.” Walter Burkert, Greek Religion

In every undertaking, consider what comes first and what comes after, then proceed to the action itself. Otherwise you will begin with a rush of enthusiasm having failed to think through the consequences, only to find that later, when difficulties appear, you will give up in disgrace. ... Different people are naturally suited to different tasks. Do you think that if you do these things you can still eat in the same way, drink in the same way, give way to anger and irritation, just as you do now? You must go without sleep, endure hardship, live away from home, be looked down on by a slave-boy, be laughed at by those whom you meet, and in everything get the worst of it: in honors, in status, in the law courts, and in every little affair. Consider carefully whether you are willing to pay such a price for peace of mind, freedom, and serenity, for if you are not, do not approach philosophy, and do not behave like children, being first a philosopher, next a tax-collector, then an orator, and later a procurator of the Emperor. These things are not compatible. You must be one person, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your ruling principle or external things, seek to improve things inside or things outside. That is, you must play the role either of a philosopher or an uneducated person.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 29

Zeus I will hymn, the greatest and the noblest,
Wide-seer, king, fulfiller, who converses
Closely with Themis as she leans toward him.
Matchless, world-watching Cronian, be gracious.

Homeric Hymn 23

Hence justice in the soul is to energize in a greater degree intellectually. But temperance is an inner conversion to intellect. And fortitude is apathy, according to a similitude of that to which the soul looks, and which is naturally impassive.

Plotinus, Enneads, 1.2.6

Let us now therefore, if ever, abandon multiform knowledge, exterminate from ourselves all the variety of life, and in perfect quiet approach near to the cause of all things. For this purpose, let not only opinion and phantasy be at rest, nor the passions alone which impede our anagogic impulse to the first, be at peace; but let the air be still, and the universe itself be still. And let all things extend us with a tranquil power to communion with the ineffable. Let us also, standing there, having transcended the intelligible (if we contain any thing of this kind), and with nearly closed eyes adoring as it were the rising sun, since it is not lawful for any being whatever intently to behold him - let us survey the sun whence the light of the intelligible Gods proceeds, emerging, as the poets say, from the bosom of the ocean; and again, from this divine tranquility descending into intellect, and from intellect, employing the reasonings of the soul, let us relate to ourselves what the natures are from which, in this progression, we shall consider the first God as exempt. And let us as it were celebrate him, not as establishing the earth and the heavens, nor as giving subsistence to souls, and the generations of all animals; for he produced these indeed, but among the last of things; but, prior to these, let us celebrate him as unfolding into light the whole intelligible and intellectual genus of Gods, together with all the supermundane and mundane divinities - as the God of all Gods, the unity of all unities, and beyond the first adyta, - as more ineffable than all silence, and more unknown than all essence, - as holy among the holies, and concealed in the intelligible Gods.

Proclus, Theology of Plato, 2.13

I believe that, as the divinities are eternally good and profitable but are never harmful, and that they ever subsist in the same uniform mode of being, we are united with them through similitude when we are virtuous but separated from them through dissimilitude when we partake of vice. That while we live according to virtue we partake of the Gods, but cause them to be our enemies when we become evil: not that they are angry (for anger is a passion, and they are impassive), but because guilt prevents us from receiving the illuminations of the Gods, and subjects us to the power of daemons of fateful justice. Hence, I believe, that if we obtain pardon of our guilt through prayers and sacrifices, we neither appease the Gods, nor cause any change to take place in them; but by methods of this kind, and by our conversion to a divine nature, we apply a remedy to our own vices and again become partakers of the goodness of the Gods. So that it is the same thing to assert, that divinity is turned from the evil, as to say that the sun is concealed from those who are deprived of sight.

Thomas Taylor, The Platonic Philosophers' Creed, 13, (moderately paraphrased to clarify the meaning of Taylor's antique English)

The fable of Aeolus, from The Odyssey, Book 10; followed by interpretation.

We reached the Aeolian island next, the home of Aeolus,
Hippotas' son, beloved by the gods who never die -
a great floating island it was, and round it all
huge ramparts rise of indestructible bronze
and sheer rock cliffs shoot up from sea to sky.
The king had sired twelve children within his halls,
six daughters and six sons in the lusty prime of youth,
so he gave his daughters as wives to his six sons.
Seated beside their dear father and doting mother,
with delicacies aplenty spread before them,
they feast on forever... All day long
the halls breathe the savor of roasted meats
and echo round to the low moan of blowing pipes,
and all night long, each one by his faithful mate,
they sleep under soft-piled rugs on corded bedsteads.

To this city of theirs we came, their splendid palace,
and Aeolus hosted me one entire month, he pressed me for news
of Troy and the Argive ships and how we sailed for home,
and I told him the whole long story, first to last.
And then, when I begged him to send me on my way,
he denied me nothing, he went about my passage.
He gave me a sack, the skin of a full-grown ox,
binding inside the winds that howl from every quarter,
for Zeus had made that king the master of all the winds,
with power to calm them down or rouse them as he pleased.
Aeolus stowed the sack inside my holds, lashed so fast
with a burnished silver cord
not even a slight puff could slip past that knot.
Yet he set the West Wind free to blow us on our way
and waft our squadron home. But his plan was bound to fail,
yes, our own reckless folly swept us on to ruin...

Nine whole days we sailed, nine nights, nonstop.
On the tenth our own land hove into sight at last -
we were so close we could see men tending fires.
But now an enticing sleep came on me, bone-weary
from working the vessel's sheet myself, no letup,
never trusting the ropes to any other mate,
the faster to journey back to native land.
But the crews began to mutter among themselves,
sure I was hauling troves of gold and silver home,
the gifts of open-hearted Aeolus, Hippotas' son.
'The old story!' One man glanced at another, grumbling.
'Look at our captain's luck - so loved by the world,
so prized at every landfall, every port of call.'

'Heaps of lovely plunder he hauls home from Troy,
while we who went through slogging just as hard,
we go home empty-handed.'

'Now this Aeolus loads him
down with treasure. Favoritism, friend to friend!'

'Hurry, let's see what loot is in that sack,
how much gold and silver. Break it open - now!'

A fatal plan, but it won my shipmates over.
They loosed the sack and all the winds burst out
and a sudden squall struck and swept us back to sea,
wailing, in tears, far from our own native land.
And I woke up with a start, my spirit churning -
should I leap over the side and drown at once or
grit my teeth and bear it, stay among the living?
I bore it all, held firm, hiding my face,
clinging tight to the decks
while heavy squalls blasted our squadron back
again to Aeolus' island, shipmates groaning hard.

We disembarked on the coast, drew water there
and crewmen snatched a meal by the swift ships.
Once we'd had our fill of food and drink
I took a shipmate along with me, a herald too,
and approached King Aeolus' famous halls and here
we found him feasting beside his wife and many children.
Reaching the doorposts at the threshold, down we sat
but our hosts, amazed to see us, only shouted questions:
'Back again, Odysseus - why? Some blustering god attacked you?
Surely we launched you well, we sped you on your way
to your own land and house, or any place you pleased.'

So they taunted, and I replied in deep despair,
'A mutinous crew undid me - that and a cruel sleep.
Set it to rights, my friends. You have the power!'

So I pleaded - gentle, humble appeals -
but our hosts turned silent, hushed...
and the father broke forth with an ultimatum:
'Away from my island - fast - most cursed man alive!
It's a crime to host a man or speed him on his way
when the blessed deathless gods despise him so.
Crawling back like this -
it proves the immortals hate you! Out - get out!'

The fable of Aeolus tells us of divine favor which protects and encourages a person as they travel the stormy sea of life, and the consequences if this guidance is rejected or ignored. The magical sack of Aeolus allows Odysseus to travel with safety and ease to his homeland - our proper homeland is the divine realm. The "sack" is Odysseus's self-mastery. However, if a person foolishly ignores or rejects providence, he will face temporary disaster. Odysseus, though he had advanced to a certain level of virtue, nevertheless falters: the “captain of the ship” (which is Reason) falls asleep, and the stupid, envious crew bring ruin by opening the sack which they wrongly believe contains gold and silver. Thus, an irrational lust proves to be deceptive; instead of gold, they lose their momentum and progress and have to start over again, this time without favor.

Hercules and the Wagoner (Aesop's Fables).

A Wagoner was driving a heavy load along a muddy road. He came to a part of the road where the wheels sank half-way into the mire, and the more the horses pulled, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Wagoner threw down his whip, knelt down and prayed to Hercules the Strong.

“O Hercules, help me in my hour of distress!”

But Hercules appeared to him, and said: “Come on, man, don’t sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel!”

The result of virtue is similarity to God. But God cannot have virtue in the same sense we do because God is already perfect.

The soul becomes virtuous as it disentangles itself from the control of the body.

Wisdom is freedom from the body in thinking.
Self-control/Temperance is freedom from the body in willing.
Courage is freedom from the fear of death.
Justice is the body in obedience to reason.

"The focus is not on being exempt from moral error, but on being God."

Control is paramount. You should never feel bullied by your "body."

The point is not that body = bad, any more than the working class of a society = bad. You need the working class, and the working class is good - but if the working class bullies the rest of the society into following its various irrational and shortsighted demands, you will have a disastrous society. It is the same with you - your reason must be King.

"Just as a target is not set up in order to be missed, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world."
Epictetus, The Handbook, 27

Evil is simply the absence of virtue - and virtue is assimilation to God.

I believe that there is one first cause of all things, whose nature is so immensely transcendent, that it is even super-essential; and that in consequence of this it cannot properly either be named or spoken of, or conceived by opinion, or be known, or perceived by any being.

I believe, however, that if it be lawful to give a name to that which is truly ineffable, the appellations of The One and The Good are of all others the most appropriate; the former of these names indicating that it is the principle of all things, and the latter that it is the ultimate object of desire to all things.

I believe that this immense principle produced such things as are first and nearest to itself, most similar to itself; just as the heat immediately proceeding from fire is most similar to the heat in the fire; and the light immediately emanating from the sun, to that which the sun essentially contains. Hence, this principle produces many principles immediately from itself.

I likewise believe that, since all things are distinct from each other and are replicated in multitudes with their proper distinctions, each of these multitudes is suspended from its one proper principle. For example, all beautiful things, whether in souls or in bodies, are suspended from one fountain of beauty. Furthermore, that whatever possesses symmetry, and whatever is true, and all principles, are in a certain respect born with the first principle, insofar as they are principles, with an appropriate subjection and likeness to it...

Thomas Taylor, The Platonic Philosophers' Creed, 1 - 4, moderately paraphrased

1. Alcibiades I
2. Gorgias
3. Phaedo
4. Cratylus
5. Theaetetus
6. Sophist
7. Statesman
8. Phaedrus
9. Symposium
10. Philebus
11. Timaeus
12. Parmenides

This is the classical curriculum of Plato's dialogues (in that order). You'll notice there are conveniently 12 of them, and none of them are particularly long (average length is about 58 pages). You can easily find free translations of them online.