Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/42

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HESIOD.

prisoned "human ills" in a chest in the abode of Epimetheus, and this chest was tampered with through the same craving for knowledge which actuated Mother Eve. This account is supported by the authority of Proclus. In Hesiod, the first mention of the chest is simultaneous with the catastrophe—

"The woman's hands an ample casket bear;She lifts the lid—she scatters ills in air.Hope sole remained within, nor took her flight,Beneath the casket's verge concealed from sight.The unbroken cell with closing lid the maidSealed, and the cloud-assembler's voice obeyed.Issued the rest, in quick dispersion hurled,And woes innumerous roamed the breathing world;With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea;Diseases haunt our frail humanity:Self-wandering through the noon, the night, they glideVoiceless—a voice the Power all-wise denied.Know then this awful truth: it is not givenTo elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven."—E. 131-144.

It is a beautiful commentary on that part of the legend which represents Hope as lying not at the bottom of the casket, but just beneath the lid which in closing shuts her in, that this did not happen through inadvertence on Pandora's part, but with her connivance, and that of her divine prompter, who, though desirous to punish mankind, represents a partial benefactor to the race. The concluding lines of the last extract recall the reader to the drift of the first part of the poem, by repeating that the moral governance of the universe will not suffer wrong to

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