Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/28

 accompanies his account of the myth of Pandora, the association of woman with unmixed evil in that legend, and the more practical advice to his brother in a later part of his 'Works and Days,' where he bids him shun the wiles of a woman "dressed out behind" (crinolines and dress-improvers being, it would seem, not by any means modern inventions), and unsparingly lashes the whole sex in the style of the verses we quote:—

Indeed, it might be maintained, quite consistently with the internal evidence of Hesiod's poems, that he lived and died a bachelor, seeing perhaps the evil influences of a worthless wife on his brother's establishment and character. It is true that in certain cases (which probably should have come more close in the text to those above cited, whereas they have got shifted to a later part of the poem, where they are less to the point) he prescribes general directions about taking a wife, in just the matter-of-fact way a man would who wrote without passion and without experience. The bridegroom was to be not far short of thirty, the bride about nineteen. Possibly in the injunction that the latter should be sought in the ranks of maidenhood, lurked the same aversion to "marrying a widow" which animated the worldly-wise father of