And therefore it seems to me that the poets did not do amiss in giving her the name of Pandora, because she gives all things that bring benefit and pleasurable enjoyment not to some only but to all creatures endowed with conscious ife. Suppose one soaring aloft on wings when spring has reached its height were to survey the uplands and the lowlands, he would see the lowlands verdant with herbage, producing pasturage and grass fodder and barley and wheat and numerous other forms of grain, some sown by the farmer, others provided self-grown by the season of the year. He would see the uplands overshadowed with the branches and foliage which deck the trees and filled with a vast quantity of fruits, not merely those which serve for food, but also those which prove to be a cure for troubles. For the fruit of the olive heals the weariness of the body and that of the vine if drunk in moderation relaxes the violence of sorrow in the soul. Further he would perceive the sweet fragrance of the exhalations wafted from the flowers and the multitudinous varieties of their colours diversified by superhuman skill. Again looking away from the cultivated vegetation, he would survey poplars, cedars, pines, firs, tall towering oaks and the other deep, unbroken forests of wild trees which overshadow the vast expanse of the huge mountains and the wide stretch of deep soil which lies at their feet. Seeing all this he will recognize that the ever-youthful earth still has the indomitable and unwearying vigour of its prime. And therefore the earth, which has suffered no diminution of its ancient strength, would, if she brought forth men before, be doing so still, and this for two most cogent reasons, part to avoid desertion of her proper post, particularly her duty of sowing and generating man, the best and chief of all the creatures who walk the land, and secondly to aid women, who in pregnancy labour with very grievous burdens for some ten months and when they are on the point of child-birth often actually die in the pains of travail. Indeed is it not terribly foolish to suppose that earth has in its bosom a womb for the sowing of men? For the place which generates life is the womb, the “workshop of nature,” as someone calls it, where alone the living are moulded into shape, and this is not a part of the earth but of a female creature framed for generation of other creatures. Folly indeed, since we should also have to say that the earth like a woman has the addition of breasts when she bore men, that the offspring when first brought to birth might have their proper sustenance. But no river or spring anywhere in the habitable earth is recorded as having ever run milk instead of water. Besides just as the newly born needs to be fed with milk, so too he needs to be sheltered by clothing to meet the harms brought upon the body by cold and heat, and therefore midwives and mothers necessarily feeling anxious to protect the offspring wrap the infants in swaddling clothes. Must not then earth-born creatures if left naked have been at once destroyed either by some refrigeration of the air or scorching of the sun, for the powers of cold and heat produce diseases and fatalities? But the myth-makers having once begun to disregard truth also made out these Sown men to have been born armed, a marvel indeed, for what smith was there on earth or a Vulcan so powerful as to prepare full suits of armour straightaway? And what suitable connexion is there between the first generation of men and wearing arms? Man is the gentlest and kindliest of animals, because nature has given him the prerogative of reason, with which the savage passions are charmed away and tamed. Far better would it be for a reasonable being if instead of arms, the herald staff, the symbol of treaties of agreement, should spring from the ground, so that it should proclaim peace instead of war to all men everywhere.
On the Eternity of the World 12
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