Note 35 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

An ill which all shall love.] In the scholia of Olympiodorus on Plato, Pandora is allegorized into the irrational soul or sensuality: as opposed to intellect. By Heinsius she is supposed to be Fortune. But there never was less occasion for straining after philosophical mysteries. Hesiod asserts in plain terms, that Pandora is the mother of woman; he tells us she brought with her a casket of diseases; and that through her the state of man became a state of labour, and his longevity was abridged. It is an ancient Asiatic legend; and Pandora is plainly the Eve of Mosaic history. How this primitive tradition came to be connected with that of the deluge is easily explained. “Time with the ancients,” observes Mr. Bryant, “commenced at the deluge; all their traditions and genealogies terminated here. The birth of mankind went with them no higher than this epocha.” We see here a confusion of events, of periods, and of characters. The fall of man to a condition of labour, disease, and death is made subsequent to the flood; because the great father of the post-diluvian world was regarded as the original father of mankind.