while innumerable ills pass hither and thither among hopeless
men. Such is the mythus of the fall of man, as imagined by the early
Greeks. Man was punished for rebelling against the will of heaven. Woman
is the instrument of his chastisement, thrust upon him by the angry
deity. She possesses every charm, every allurement, but her very
fascination is a chief cause of ill to man. He in his folly receives
her, and thence befall him all the ills of life. The whole argument of
Hesiod in this passage indicates that he regarded woman as "a necessary
deduction from the happiness of life," as "the rift in the lute that
spoils its music." Contrasted with the Hebrew story, the Greek
represents woman as closing the door of hope to man; while the Hebrew
version sees in her seed the hope of the salvation that is to overcome
the evils of the fall. Even stronger is Hesiod's invective against the
female sex in the _Theogony_, where he repeats the story of Pandora, and
concludes with the following reflections:

"From her the sex of tender woman springs;
Pernicious is the race; the woman tribe
Dwells upon earth, a mighty bane to men;
No mates for wasting want but luxury;
And as within the close-roofed hive, the drones,
Helpers of sloth, are pampered by the bees;
These all the day, till sinks the ruddy sun,
Haste on the wing, 'their murmuring labors ply,'
And still cement the white and waxen comb;
Those lurk within the covered hive, and reap
With glutted maw the fruits of others' toil;
Such evil did the Thunderer send to man
In woman's form, and so he gave the sex,
Ill helpmates of intolerable toils.
Yet more of ill instead of good he gave:
The man who shunning wedlock thinks to shun
The vexing cares that haunt the woman-state,
And lonely waxes old, shall feel the want
Of one to foster his declining years;
Though not his life be needy, yet his death
Shall scatter his possessions to strange heirs,
And aliens from his blood. Or if his lot
Be marriage and his spouse of modest fame
Congenial to his heart, e'en then shall ill
Forever struggle with the partial good,
And cling to his condition. But the man
Who gains the woman of injurious kind
Lives bearing in his secret soul and heart
Inevitable sorrow: ills so deep
As all the balms