Another excellent illustration of this conflict between the primitive and the subsequent views of the nature and importance of women is furnished by the elaborate treatment of the Pandora legend in the Opera et Dies of Hesiod. On the one hand is the early conviction of the power of women’s influence—it is only by the help of a woman that Zeus can outwit man: on the other the later conviction that this influence must be for evil—before Pandora came
ζώεσκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ’ ἀνθρώπων
νόσφιν ἄτερ τε κακῶν καὶ ἄτερ χαλεποῖο πόνοιο. (l. 90)
And a like contradiction runs through all the details of the description. Woman will be man’s ruin, but he cannot fail to love her all the same—
τοῖς δ’ἐγὼ ἀντὶ πυρὸς δώσω κακὸν ᾧ κεν ἅπαντες
τέρπωνται κατὰ θυμὸν ἑὸν κακὸν ἀμφαγαπῶντες. (l. 57)
Woman will gain man’s heart by her beauty, which is like that of the immortals—
ἀθανάταις δὲ θεαῖς εἰς ὦπα ἐΐσκειν
παρθενικῆς καλὸν εἶδος ἐπήρατον (l. 62),