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HOPE INA JAR II7
must teach her to have "careful ways" (neea KESVcl. Op. 699). Thus the
inherently evil ways the woman inherits from Pandora (Op. 67. 78) are
ameliorated and she is. as far as possible. redeemedY In other wordsand
this is hardly surprising within the context of our poem-a man
has to work on his wife just as he must work the fields. So also. we may
infer. a right-minded man will "work on" his essentially evil EAlTlc. Its
trap will be evaded only if a man maintains a wary attitude towards its
beautiful promise and keeps on working. Working through adversarial
EAlTlc. then. is a portion of fallen men's toiL
Hesiodic EAlTlc is inextricably bound to the earth. The lTieoe in which
it resides would have been set deeply into the ground, in effect burying
EAlTlc in the soiL EAlTlc comes into men's world together with the need to
work the earth hard. The earth. changed by an angry Zeus from endlessly
fruitful to fruit-concealing. is the home of EAlTic. EAlTlc presents a
heartwarming vision of future riches to be won from the earth. a vision
that must remind men of a lost age of plenty and ease. of nearness to
godhood. Men nowadays inhabit a fragment of Zeus' cosmos whose
beauty is delusive. whose promise is made and then withheld. whose
"hope" seems to be a resource but is. in fact. an obstacle to success. 43
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
TORONTO. ON MS5 2E8
REFERENCES
Beall. E.F. 1990. "The contents of Hesiod's Pandora jar." Hermes I IT 227-230.
Broccia. G. 1958. "Pandora. il pithos e la elpis." PP 13: 296-309.
Carson. A. 1990. "Putting her in her place: Women. dirt. and desire." in O.M.
Halperin. J.J. Winkler. F.r. Zeitlin. eds.. Before Sexuality: The Construction of
Erotic Experience in the Ancient World. Princeton. 135-169.
Clay. J.5. 2003. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge.
Cohen. O. 1989. "Seclusion. separation. and the status of women in Classical
Athens," Greece and Rome36: 3-15.
Cullen. T., O.R. Keller. 1990. "The Greek pithos through time: Multiple functions
and diverse imagery," in W.O. Kingery, ed. The Changing Roles of Ceramics
in Society 26.000 B.P. to the Present. Westerville, OH. 183-2°9.
42 Cf. Zeitlin (1996) 71. The need to train one's wife is a topic addressed again
by Ischomachus in Xenophon's Oeconomicus. For discussion of this wifely education
and its implications for the Greek view(s) of women. see Murnaghan
(1988); Pomeroy (1984) and (1989).
43 I would like to dedicate this essay to my Greek class of 200213. with thanks
and love.