The finished nymph, the inextricable snare;
To Epimetheus was the present brought,
Prometheus' warning vanished from his thought—
That he disclaim each offering from the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man should rise.
But he received, and conscious knew too late
The invidious gift, and felt the curse of fate."
—E. 114-124.
How this gift of "woman" was to be the source of prolific evil and sorrow, the poet, it must be confessed, does not very coherently explain. Nothing is said, in the account of her equipment, of any chest or casket sent with her by Zeus, or any other god, as an apparatus for propagating ills. And when in v. 94 of the poem we are brought face to face with the chest and the lid, and Pandora's fatal curiosity, the puzzle is "how they got there." Homer, indeed, glances at two chests, one of good the other of evil gifts, in Jove's heavenly mansion:—
One laden with good gifts, and one with ill:
To whomso Zeus ordains a mingled share,
Now in due time with foul he meeteth, now with fair."
—Conington, Il. xxiv.
And those who hold Hesiod to have lived after Homer, or to have availed himself here and there of the same pre-existent legends, may infer that the poet leaves it to be surmised that Pandora was furnished with the less desirable casket for the express purpose of woe to man. But it is a more likely solution that Prometheus, the embodiment of mythic philanthropy, had im-
