[7] The Poet
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is regarded as extraordinarily successful in bestowing consolation, where he represents Achilles as speaking to Priam, who has come to ransom Hector, as follows:
Come then and rest on a seat; let us suffer our sorrows to slumber Quietly now in our bosoms, in spite of our woeful afflictions; Nothing is ever accomplished by yielding to chill lamentation. Thus, then, the gods have spun the fate of unhappy mortals, Ever to live in distress, but themselves are free from all trouble. Fixed on Zeus’ floor two massive urns stand for ever, Filled with gifts of all ills that he gives, and another
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of blessings; He on whom Zeus, god of thunder, bestows their contents commingled Sometimes meets with the good, and again he meets only with evil. Him upon whom he bestows what is baneful he makes wholly wretched; Ravenous hunger drives him o’er the earth’s goodly bosom, Hither and thither he goes, unhonoured of gods or of mortals.
Hesiod, who, although he proclaimed himself the disciple of the Muses, is nevertheless second to Homer in reputation as well as in time, also confines the evils in a great urn and represents Pandora as opening it and scattering the host of them over the whole land and sea. His words
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are as follows:
Then with her hands did the woman, uplifting the urn’s massive cover, Let them go as they would; and on men she brought woeful afflictions. Hope alone where it was, with its place of abode yet undamaged, Under the rim of the urn still tarried; nor into the open Winged its way forth; for before it escaped she had put on the cover. More are the woes unnumbered among men now freely ranging. Full is the land now of evils, and full of them too is the ocean; Illnesses come upon men in the daytime, and others at nighttime; Hither and thither they go, of themselves bringing evils to mortals; Silent they go, since the wisdom of Zeus has deprived them of voices.
Consolatio ad Apollonium. Plutarch. Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1928.
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