Man’s dependence on the gods is naturally recognized in Hesiod as elsewhere by the obligations of sacrifice, libation, and prayer, for these are universal modes of religious expression. The poet betrays the unimaginative character of a peasant by the baldness with which he says that material prosperity is the whole purpose of religious observance as well as of justice: “According to thy ability offer sacrifice to the immortal gods with thy person pure and undefiled, and burn the goodly thigh-pieces; again propitiate them with libations and with sacrifices, both when thou liest down and when the sacred light comes, that they may have a heart and mind kindly disposed toward thee; that thus thou mayest buy the land of others and not another thine.”[66] Yet we must remember that this huckster’s mind, as Plato might have called it, was common enough in Greece, that it was the ordinary attitude of the official Roman religion throughout Rome’s history, and that it has not disappeared from men’s thought today. In the Iliad and Odyssey evil, like the good, comes from the gods. The simple fact is unquestionably recognized. But Hesiod searches more deeply for the origin of evil which he pessimistically regards as omnipresent. The story of Prometheus and Pandora contains in part the poet’s answer to this eternal riddle. The myth was already ancient and familiar to all. Once men lived without effort and free from evils, but when led by crafty Prometheus they had endeavored to cheat Zeus of the better part of the sacrificed bullock, the god withheld fire from them. Yet the cunning Titan stole a spark of this divine fire and delivered it to mortals. This Zeus allowed men to keep; by its aid they created all industries, but only at the cost of constant toil and struggle. Prometheus he punished harshly. To work his vengeance on mortals he caused Hephaestus to create a woman on whom the gods bestowed all gifts so that she was named Pandora. She opened a jar containing every kind of evil, which straightway flew out among mankind. Only Ἐλπίς remained therein—a word hardly equivalent to our Hope, but rather meaning “anticipation of misfortune.” It then is the only plague to which man is not subjected.[67] He is obliged to suffer, having been involved in the original sin of Prometheus, who wished to cheat Zeus of the sacrifice due him. Such is the sacred tale offered as an explanation of the presence of evils on earth. To us it seems childish, and indeed it did not completely satisfy Hesiod.