The old poetry of Hesiod already speaks of two roads of life, a short and easy road which is that of vice, and the path of virtue, which is at first steep and rugged but becomes less hard as soon as the top of the slope is reached. Everyone knows the use which the sophist Prodicus makes of this ancient comparison in the famous myth of Hercules at the crossroads.[360] In it, two women appear to the youthful hero, and one seeks to draw him to the path of deceitful pleasures while the other succeeds in conducting him to the path of austere labours which leads to true happiness. This same conception, which is transmitted through the whole of antiquity, inspired the Pythagoreans with the symbol of the letter Y, formed of a vertical spike topped by two divergent branches. The spike is the road common to all men until they have reached the age of reason and responsibility. Subsequently they must choose between the right and the left branches. The former, say these moralists, is steep and rough and at first requires strenuous effort, but when those who climb it have gained its summit they obtain a well-deserved rest. The other road is at first level and pleasant, but it leads to harsh rocks and ends in a precipice over which the wretched man who has followed it is hurled. This symbol was popular in antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages, a fact of which a curious proof, additional to those in the texts, has lately been found. This is a relief, accompanied by an inscription, dating from the first century of our era, which has been discovered at Philadelphia in Lydia.[361] It decorated, as the epitaph shows, the tomb of a Pythagorean, and it is divided into compartments by mouldings in the form of the letter Y. Below, to the right, a child is seen, in the care of a woman who is designated as Virtue (Ἀρετή); above, a ploughman, driving his plough, stands for the hard and persevering labour of the good man, who, still higher, lies on a couch before a table like the guest at a “funeral banquet” because he has obtained the reward of his toil. On the left side there is also, below, a woman with a child, but she stands for wantonness (Ἀσωτεία); above her a figure is indolently lying on a bed; and still further above, the same figure is seen falling into a gulf, head downwards, in chastisement of his vices.