Yet the problems of evil and of the justice of the gods were not satisfactorily solved for Theognis and his contemporaries. In two striking passages he criticizes Zeus, saying first: “Dear Zeus, I wonder at thee, for thou rulest over all things, having thrice great honor and great power, and thou knowest well the mind and will of each man, and thy own power is supreme over all, O King. How is it, then, son of Cronos, that thy mind endures to keep wicked men and the just subject to the same lot? Whether the mind of the one be turned to prudence or of the other, who trusts in unjust action, to insolence, there is no distinction made by god or mortals; nor is there any road which one may travel and please the gods.”[109] In the second passage his reproach is the keener from the form of its expression: “Father Zeus, would that it might be the will of the gods that insolence be the pleasure of the wicked, and would that it might be their pleasure, that whoever contriveth wicked deeds in heart and thought, having no regard for the gods, should pay for his wickedness himself; and the folly of the father not harm the children thereafter; and would that the children of an unjust father, who themselves have just purposes and regard for thy wrath, Son of Cronos, they who from childhood love justice along with their fellow citizens, might not pay for the insolence of their sires. I would that such might be the will of the blessed gods. But as it is, the man who does evil escapes, and another then bears the evil. How then is this just, King of the Immortals, that a man who has no part in unjust deeds should himself be treated unjustly?”[110] Here we have not only a recognition of the fact that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generations—a truth which Solon had earlier enunciated,[111]—but also a protest against the injustice of it. These are some of the conflicting expressions on morality, justice, and religion, which we find among the fragments of these early poets. The contradictions which they show need not surprise us, for we are drawing, as I have already said, from mere fragments written on various themes and for different occasions; so the record is inevitably imperfect. Nor must we suppose that the poets of this time had arrived at any clearer conceptions with regard to these fundamental questions than thinkers of a later age; the problem of evil, the justice of the divine economy, the prosperity of the wicked and the sufferings of the good are matters which still baffle men as they did more than twenty-five centuries ago.