That thou shouldst burn, that thou shouldst burn, and have no hope of riddance,
That joy should ever 'scape thy clasp, and sorrow dog thy goings,
That thine own kin should slander thee and thy friends rail upon thee,
Nor strangers nor thy countrymen know aught of love toward thee.
Yet, hapless man, not thine the sin; thy parents' was the sinning,
That chainèd not those hounds right fast to a corner of their dwelling;
Well is it said by men of old, well bruit they loud the saying,
"The fathers eat of acid things, and the bairns' teeth fall aching."
Have patience then, O hapless man, a year or twain of patience,
And there shall come a happy day when all thy woes shall vanish;
For all thy bitterness of soul thou shalt find consolation,
Thy dreams of beauty and of wealth thou shalt at last encompass[1].'
The Fates, it has been already said, are three in number; why so, it seems impossible to determine. It may be that the functions discharged by them fell readily into a three-fold division; thus in the district of Zagorion in Epirus, one Fate 'spins the thread' ([Greek: klôthei to gnema]) which determines the length of life, the second apportions good fortune, and the third bad[2]. Or again, the division may have been made in such a way that one Fate should preside over each of the three great events of human experience, birth, marriage, and death. The term 'fate' ([Greek: moira])[3] is often used by women as a synonym for marriage ([Greek: gamos])—in curious contrast with the man's more optimistic description of his wedding as [Greek: chara], 'joy'; and a Greek proverb, used of a very ignorant man, [Greek: den xerei ta tria kaka tês Moiras tou], 'he does not know the three evils of his Fate,' to wit birth, marriage, and death, carries the connexion of fate with these three events a little further. But such distributions of functions are probably posterior to the choice of the number. Three was always a sacred number, and the ancients delighted in trinities of goddesses[4].
But besides the three great Fates we must recognise also in modern Greece the existence of lesser Fates, attached each to a single human life. This is a slight extension of the main belief, and consists really in the personification of the objective fate which the three great Fates decree. Just as each man is believed to have his good guardian-angel and, by antithesis but with less biblical warranty, his bad angel, so too he is accompanied by his own personal Fate. But these lesser FatesI. pp. 310, 311.]of the 'destined' bridegroom, in Hom. Od. XVI. 392.]
