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Greece, the Near East, and Egypt: Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women Author(s): Ludwig Koenen Source: Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), Vol. 124 (1994), pp. 1-34 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284283 . Accessed: 03/06/2011 18:51
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Transactionsof the AmericanPhilological Association 124 (1994) 1-34

residential Address 1993

Washington, D.C.

in Greece, the NearEast,and Egypt: CyclicDestruction Hesiodand the Catalogueof Women

Ludwig Koenen Universityof Michigan Since the beginning of this century,an increasingnumberof scholars in our field have studiedthe influence of NearEasternculturesuponthe Greeks:archaeologists andarthistorianshave articulated Orientalizing an period;new finds cast light even into the DarkAge; the decipherment linearB has changedourview of Greekpreof history; the unearthingof many new texts in Greek, Ancient Near Eastern, and Egyptian languages has advanced our knowledge of these societies. We can no longer afford to look at early Greece in isolation. What is known to researchers, however, does not always reach the classroom, and the general public is hardly awarethatour pictureof ancientculturesand, in particular, early Greek culture, of has undergonedynamicchanges.The Westerntradition,with its hold on education, has tendedto stressthe uniquenessof Greekcultureandits literature, in reading and Homer we can, in fact, enjoy the aesthetic values of the Iliad without considering oralliterature. Yet,when we askhistoricalquestions-How did this enjoyablepiece of literature come into being?Whatwas its functionwithin the culturewhose hopes and values it reflected?Why is this epic still importantfor moder society?-it is no longer sufficient to follow Porphyrios' tradition-bound advice and explain Homerout of Homer.1 must comparetheIliad with otherancientor structurally We similar epics and Homer's world with that of other cultures.We then get a better sense of what the Greeks owe to others, and we bettercomprehendhow they used foreign concepts productively,makingthem building-blocks of theirown culture. Originalitylies rarelyin the grandidea, bornout of nothingin the brainof a genius;
1See R. Pfeiffer,Historyof Classical Scholarship (Oxford1968) 227. I

Ludwig Koenen

it more often develops from the reworking of a concept received from others.2 Moreover, intercultural influences tend not to move along a one-way street, nor do individuals and peoples adopt something unless they are ready to do so. Such readiness tends to develop over a long process of interculturalexchanges, and the ultimate product of borrowing and adaptationseldom bears much similarity to what was originally borrowed. I. Hesiod's Story of the Five Ages, its Structure and Function within the Erga Let us use Hesiod's story of the Five Ages as an example.3The passage is in everyone's mind, and yet there is little agreement over what Hesiod is saying. Hence, I ask your patience for my brief retelling of the highlights (Op. 106201).4

The first two ages of mankind were created by the Olympian gods
(a&avatcot... 'OXgitta 5c6batX' Ieovtrc, 110) under the rule of Kronos (oi gev [sc. the people of the golden age] ?It Kpovou Icav, 111).5 In the first, or 2As Glenn W. Most phrasedit in a letter to me (March 16, 1994), "individualityis not of uniqueness, but the creativetransformation an integratedheritage."Cf. A. Heubeck's remarks in "MythologischeVorstellungendes Alten Orients im archaischenGriechentum," Gymnasium62 (1955) 508-25, esp. 522 (repr.in Hesiod, Wege der Forschung44, ed. by E. Heitsch [Darmstadt 1966], 545-70, esp. 570). EarlierI had occasion to discuss my interpretation of Hesiod with GlennMost, andthatdiscussioninfluencedmy thought,althoughwe also to details.I also had the opportunity discuss the passage agreedto disagreein some important fromthe Catalogue(below, sect. III)withJ. Lataczand,afterreadingthispaper,the dateof the Cataloguewith R. Janko;otherreferencesI owe to G. Nagy. In the final phases,Ann Hanson of had a decisive influenceon boththe conceptualization the complexintercultural phenomena that I try to describe in this paperand on the imagery with which I describe them. But, of course, none of my friends shouldbe implicatedin any view or theorywhich I presenthere. edited Finally,I am also muchobligedto the patienceandcarewith which SanderM. Goldberg this paper. sense in becauseof therestrictive 3Inthe followingpages I shalltryto avoidthe term"races" But which the termis used in our vernacular. "age,"the wordI shall use, is not preciselywhat of Hesiodhadin mind.He does not talkaboutthe creation periodsof time, butaboutthe human beings who lived in specific periodsof theirown. For the problem,see J. Fontenrose,"Work, Justice, and Hesiod's Five Ages," CP 69 (1974) 1-16, esp. 1 n. 1, and, with regardto a difet P. ferentkindof misunderstanding, Mazon,Hesiode,Les Travaux les Jours (Paris1914) 83. 4As did Hesiod: ?KKop )10p6cco,106 (pace W. J. Verdenius,A Commentaryon Hesiod, of Worksand Days, vv. 1-382 [Leiden 1985],ad loc.). My understanding the entirepassageis much obligated to earlierliterature, by especially to the commentaries M. L. West (Hesiod, Work & Days [Oxford 1978]), W. J. Verdenius, and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, HesiodosErga (Dublin1928). 5Thereis some criticaldiscussionas to who createdthe people of the golden and silverages 86pxac' ' ovTccelsewherein Hesiod refers to Zeus and his generationof because 'Okcu6xtta Hermes85 [1957] 257-85, esp. 278f. G. Rosenmeyer,"HesiodandHistoriography," gods (T. [repr.in Hesiod, WdF (above, n. 2) 602-48, esp. 637f.]). I see no difficulty in assumingthat

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

golden, age (106-26) people lived like gods, without cares and sorrow, not subject to aging, always feasting, and untroubled by evil. Earth gave them plenteous fruits without toil. Death came like sleep. When this age ended, they became deities on earth (Saitgovec ... ?c0kXolrctx06viot, 122f.), guardiansof men keeping watch over justice (8i{r, 124) and evil deeds (ceXiota Epya),6 and givers of wealth. This was their royal privilege (pactX,ilov y?pac, 126). In the second, or silver, age (127-42) the same gods created mortals anew (OXkjrTcta 6U&ato' %Xovtrc,128, cf. n 5), but these were lesser both in their physical appearance and in their morality. They dwelt like children for one hundred years in their maternalhouse, but, once grown up, they lived only for a short period and suffered because of their folly (aCppaSr6nc, 133). They did not restrain themselves from crimes (i)3ptc) against one another. Yet, in contrast to later ages, they did not engage in warfare. vipptc, now appearing for the first time, did not permeate their lives. When Zeus came to power, they did not sacrifice to the (new) Olympians, so he destroyed their life on earth (138f.).7 Yet, living beneath the surface of the earth, they are called gods and
mortals alike (xoi gev ii)rcoX6viot gaicoapec Ovrltoi' KaXovTal, 141).8 They

the formulais adapted a moregeneralmeaningin the presentcontext(see West on line 110). to The gods in generalcreatedhumankind, Zeus is responsible and specificallyfor the bronzeage and the following ages (R. S. Shannon,The Arms of Achilles and Homeric Compositional Technique, Suppl. Mnemosyne 36 [Leiden 1975], 109-10 and 127f.; G. Nagy, Greek in Mythologyand Poetics [IthacaandLondon1990], 200 andn. 128). Hesiod is not interested relatingthe timeof the presentmythto thetimeof the successionmythof the gods. 61keep lines 124-25 althoughthey arerepeated 254-55; see Verdenius loc.; West supin ad portstheirdeletion(as does Wilamowitz). 7Zeushereappears the secondtimein the Mythof the Five Ages. He is firstmentioned for in for 122, wherehis planis responsible assigningthe deadof the goldenage to theirnew function as 5aitgovec(for the textualproblemsee the app.critt.andcommentaries). we wish to relate If this stageof the mythto the successionmyth(butsee n. 5), thenZeus is not yet in chargeandis becausehe is the guarantor the presentworld-order which these spirits of in merelymentioned have shareandfunction(see Verdenius West). WhenZeus next appears,he is in his wrath and andmakesthe people of the silver age disappear (Eicp0ye XoXootgevoc,138), becausethey did not honor the gods (oiSveicaTtgic I OuK ?S&ov ItaKacdpecct o< "OXU"ogov 0?oic `o}ouctv; see also 135f.). Again, the "Godswho have theirseats on Olympos"is a comprehensive term, but this time we may thinkspecificallyof Zeus and the youngergeneration gods. The next of age of mankindwill be createdby Zeus (143). The people of the silver age did not worshipthe In gods as the youngergods required. termsof the successionmyth,then, the older gods were replacedby Zeus andthe youngergods beforeZeus destroyedthe silver age. For the view that Kronospresidedonly over the golden age, see, for example,West's commentary line 111; on Fontenrose (above,n. 3); W. Nicolai, HesiodsErga (Heidelberg1964) 39. 8Forthe soundness the text see thecommentaries of thus (Wilamowitz; West;Verdenius; also Solmsen; Marg); others have adopted Peppmiiller's conjecture Ovlirotc (Rzach, Mason, Evelyn-White,Lattimore, Colonna).

Ludwig Koenen

are the ancestor heroes. As such they are honored,9 although they are inferior to those of the golden age. Zeus created the next three ages of mankind (143-55) after, it would seem, he had replaced Kronos. The third age, that of bronze, represented, in a real sense, the first human beings. They were totally different from those of the silver age. They were born from the Melian nymphs, the sisters of the Erinyes and the Giants, recalling not only the ash tree and wooden spear, but also the dark stories about human birth from trees.10 They engaged in deeds of war and in hybris ("Apeoc i?py(a) ... c.cai Dpptec, 145f.), and thus they were worse than those of the silver age. No longer did they live from grain (oio68 Tt ciTov I ic0tov, 146f.), but they ate meat, the flesh of animals. Their minds and bodies were fierce; they used weapons, houses, and tools of bronze; they killed themselves off, going nameless to Hades. Death took them, for all their might. At this point Hesiod interrupts the deterioration11 and has Zeus create a better and juster, a fourth, age of heroes or demigods, the immediate predecesto 9Forthe irony of the mankindof the silver being transformed cult heroes and thus being honored by the gods whom they themselves did not honor, see Nagy, Greek Mythology (above, n. 5) 134f. 1?Formen bornfrom an ash-tree see Shannon,The Armsof Achilles (n. 5) 44-57; Wilaad mowitz' andWest's commentaries loc.; U. Bianchi,"Razzaaurea,mitodelle cinquerazzeed dell'Universita Elisio,"Studie materialidi storiadelle religioni,Scuoladi studistorico-religiosi di Roma, 34 (1963) 143-210, esp. 174f; Nagy, Mythology(above, n. 5) 200 and n. 128. 11 I deterioration. hope that as Thereis disagreement to whetherthereis indeeda continuous my telling of the storyindicatesmy view: goldenage: god-like life withoutsorrowsandlabor, spiritson plenty of fruitand festivities;longevity, afterdeath(= sleep) they become guardian to earth.-> 2. silver age:longevityrestricted childhood; hybrisagainsteach other,butno wars; no worshipof gods as yet; aftertheirend, they become spiritsunderthe surfaceof the earth a (tombs). -> 3. bronzeage: first real people, strongof body and mind, with presumably normal life span,meat-eaters;hybrisand wars;afterdeathin Hades withoutfame. -> 4. Heroic demi-gods;evil andwarscontinue,butthe warsareorganizedand age: morejust andsuperior; to purposeful(ThebesandTroy);all are killed by these warsandtransferred the Islandsof the -> Blest, where the golden age is partiallyreinstituted. 5. iron age: greatintensityof endless sorrows;mixtureof good andevil developinginto a totalcollapse of all society;no respectfor gods, oaths,justice, and good, honorfor the evil doer andman of hybris;progressiveloss of of Aidos andNemesisleave the world.The overalldeterioration the ages is precisely childhood; gaugednot only by the metals and theirsymbolicvalues, but also in the case of the firstfour ages by the functionandfate they have in the afterlife.On bothcounts, the heroicage is an exhas ception (cf. n. 12 and below in the main text). This deterioration been denied by J. P. Vernant'sstructural analysis;see his "Le mythe hesiodiquedes races. Essai d'analyse structurale,"RHR 157 (1960) 21-54, esp. 41 (repr.in idem, Mytheet pens6e chez les grecs [Paris 1965], 18-47), andcf. his defense in "Le mythe h6siodiquedes races",RPh, ser. 3, 40 (1966) bei des "FormundFunktion Weltaltermythos Hesiod,"in Arktouros, 247-76; K. Matthiessen, Hellenic Studiespresentedto B. M. W. Knox,ed. by G. W. Bowersock,W. Burkert,and M. and C. J. Putnam(Berlinand New York 1979) 25-32; P. Pucci, "Ldvi-Strauss ClassicalCulture,"Arethusa4 (1971) 103-17, esp.107f.However,theconclusionthatthe themeof progres-

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

sors of Hesiod's own age (156-73). Again, these engaged in evil war and dreadfulbattle, as Hesiod says with a line also used once in the Iliad: nokeg6oc TreKacKcc KXa (pq oxntc aiv/i (Erga 161 and Iliad 4.82). The quotation raises the Hesiodic heroes to the glorified light of Homeric traditionand distinguishes them from previous and subsequent generations with their aimless wars. These heroes died at Thebes and at Troy, as Greek traditions had it. But, as I understand Hesiod's ambiguous lines, the entire race was transplantedby Zeus to the Islands of the Blest,12 where, under Kronos, they live on in a renewed golden age. Earth grants them three harvests in the year.
sive deterioration interrupted the age of the heroesdoes not precludea structure pairsin is of by chiasticorder:the goldenage (1) is to the silverage (2) as the heroicage (4) is to the bronzeage (3). P. Walcot, "The Compositionof the Works and Days," REG 74 (1961) 1-19, esp. 4-7, andHesiodand the Near East (Cardiff1966) 81f., thoughtthatin a historyof oraltradition the original myth encompassedonly the first four ages as a sequence of good (gold) and bad (silver), bad (bronze)and good (heroes)and thatHesiod begins a new topic, justice, at 174. But the presentfifth age can hardlybe separated from the precedingages (cf. Matthiessen, "Form" [above]26 n. 4). 12ThusProklosad 166 (Schol. Vet. ed. A. Pertusi).This interpretation does not dependon the deletionof line 166 (F. Solmsen,AJP 103 [1982] 19-24, esp. 22-24, andin his editionof the text). See Wilamowitz'commentary 168; Rosenmeyer,"Hesiod"(above, n. 5) 273 or to 628f. of the reprint;Nicolai, Hesiods Erga (above, n. 7) 42-46; G. Nagy, Pindar's Homer (BaltimoreandLondon 1990) 277 n.16 andGreekMythology (above,n. 5) 126 n. 17. Cf. also Vernant,"Le mythe"(above, n. 11) 21-54, esp. 41, and 18-47, esp. 36, respectively;Matder thiessen,"Form" (above, n. 11), andidem,"DasZeitalter Heroenbei Hesiod,"Philologus 121 (1977) 176-88. But becauseaccess to the Islandsof the Blest in Homer,as well as in the later tradition,was reservedfor few heroes, many scholarsunderstand Hesiod as if he were offering this happy afterlife to some heroes only: e.g. West and Verdenius in their commentaries;E. Rohde, Psyche (Tuibingen 1907), I 102-06 (Engl. transl.by W.B. Hillis [New York 1925] 74-76; K. von Fritz, "Pandora, Prometheusand the Myth of the Ages," The Review of Religion 11 (1947) 227-60, esp. 233f. (repr.in Hesiod, WdF [above, n. 2], 367410, esp. 377f.); Mazon,Hesiode (above,n. 3) 62, 67, and73; Bianchi,"Razzaaurea" (above, n. 10) 179f. In some ancientbeliefs, however,hope for a happyafterlifeandaccess to the Islandsof the Blest seems to have been less restricted;see, for example, Pindar,01. 2; Carm. conv. 11 in PMG 894; andcf. also Simon. 22 West (2nd. ed.). Closely relatedare the Germanicbeliefs in Odin's Walahalla whitherall warriors died in battlewent andenjoyeda pleasurable J. that life: Grimm,DeutscheMythologie(G6ttingen4 1876), II 682-88. For relatedbeliefs see M. Boyce, "Onthe Antiquityof Zoroastrian BSOAS 47.1 (1984) 57-75, esp. 62-66; among Apocalyptic," other Indo-Europeanpeople, B. Lincoln, "On the Imageryof Paradise,"Indoeuropdische Forschungen 85 (1980) 151-64; but the concept was not restrictedto the Indo-Europeans. in When,as in Hesiod, the heroesareconcentrated one age thatis called, as a result,the age of to heroes,theirhappyafterlifewas expanded the entireage. Withinthe Greektradition, thereare also tracesof the flip side of the samestory,namelythatthe Trojan led to a totaldestruction war of the warriors-most importantly Iliad 12.23 it is Jgt0itov in that yEvocavSpCov dies at Troy; to according Iliad 4.85-88, Zeushas destinedthe Greekarmyat Troyto endurewarfromyouth to old age, o(ppa(p0t6ouecoa eiCTOC.In the context of ideas about the destructionof the heroicage, these passagesseem to be morethana rhetorical exaggeration, reflectinginsteada

Ludwig Koenen

The fifth is the present age of iron (174-201). It is characterized by never-ending sufferings (176-78), in total contrast with the golden age (112f.). Someday Zeus will destroy this age, whenever human beings are born with gray temples (180f.). The extended childhood of the silver age (130f.) will thus become its opposite-the complete loss of childhood-and this will be the sign of the end. Hesiod never suggested that the series will start again. Moreover, the fifth age is described as an unfolding process, with what begins as a mixture of good and bad (179) becoming unmitigatedevil, accompanied by the collapse of social structures and neglect of the gods (182-89). Thus the fifth race ends worse than it began. The intensity of Hesiod's language and the minute details he provides make this age far worse than its bronze counterpart. We will returnlater to some details of Hesiod's description of the age of iron. First we shall look at the function of the story of the Five Ages at the beginning of the Erga, a work that presents itself as a series of admonitions. Hesiod warns Perses, his brother,to work honestly as a farmer;and he admonishes him and the "kings" to use justice in adjudicatingthe two brothers' property dispute. But inconsistencies indicate that the personal story is no more than a foil for admonitions of universal dimensions (cf. West, pp. 33-40). In this manner Hesiod explains the deplorable state of the present-day world. At the same time, he introduces a faint hope that societal disintegration is not irreversible. He opens his narrativewith three mythological paradigms, each of which in its own way explains the presence of evil in this world.13First is the existence of two kinds of Eris (strife): a bad Eris, producing war and battle, and a good Eris, encouraging competitive work and bringing success (11-26). Second is Prometheus' story-his quarrel with Zeus and the creation of Pandora, the beautiful but treacherous woman with her box of evil gifts. All her gifts were released except for hope, the ambiguous gift that could make life bearable (42-105). Deceived by an imitation of beauty and lacking hope, mankind seems lost. In line 273, however, Hesiod still has some hope in Zeus.14
background of traditional beliefs; see W. Kullmann, Die Quellen der Ilias, Hermes Einzelschriften14 (Wiesbaden1960) 47 n. 2 and below, n. 68; Matthiessen,"Das Zeitalter" (above) 183. 13Cf.,for example,von Fritz,"Pandora" (above,n. 12) 231f. and 373f. respectively. 14Sufficeit to referto P. Pucci,Hesiod and the Languageof Poetry (BaltimoreandLondon (above,n. 12). V. Leinieks,in a very helpfulsurvey 1977) 82-126 and to von Fritz,"Pandora" in and of the meaningof aXnic("'EXdic Hesiod, Works Days 96," Philologus 128 [1984] 1-8, of pointsto the use of the word"asfalse expectation good"thatprovides"theconfidencewhich makes it possible for men to undertakevarious ventures."This, again, is something of ambivalentvalue (as his examples show; p. 4). Leinieksjoins those who take KXticin the twist: Xnitc evil, butkeepingit in thejar is is Pandora storyas negative,butwith an interesting even worse. Men cannotpreparefor it, and evil comes unexpected.But, I presume,even the

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

The Pandora myth is not the poet's final word. Third is the story of the Five Ages, four of which are completed cycles. The repetitive cycles roll in linear fashion from the beginning of mankind to humanity's end.15 In this way the narrative proceeds from past history to a tentative eschatology, whose predictions are marked by use of the future tense.16 Although the 'history' is an aetiologic tale of how evils entered the world, a small hope is counterpoised to the evils, as traces of the earlier and better ages linger on. The golden age left behind the good spirits to watch over men (also lines 251-55); the dead of the silver age live on in their venerated tombs, and those of the bronze age inhabit Hades, whither all subsequent men now go.17 These are the beliefs of Hesiod's audience, who will themselves descend one day to Hades, yet in their lifetimes they venerate the tombs of their ancestors and they hope for the intervention of the protector spirits in their day-to-day business of gathering wealth, as well as in their time of need. Because these things are true, Hesiod's audience will conclude that his predictions about the end of mankind will also come true. The truth of the past narrativevalidates the prediction of the future.
unexpectednessof evil is a very ambiguousthing. It can make survival possible. Even if Pandora'shope were clearly evil, keeping it in the jar would be a potentialgood and would, makehopepossible. paradoxically, 15Thesequenceof the ages in the chronological of can ordering Hesiod's narrative be understoodas, primafacie, indicatinga hierarchy, lineartemporality. not Eachcycle is subjectto its own progressionand constitutescyclical time (cf. Vernant,"Le mythe"[above, n. 11] 24-27 and22-24 respectively).On the otherhand,Hesioddoes not give any indicationthatthe series of cycles constitutesa large cycle which may repeatitself in the same or in reverseorder.Instead,time developsfroma firstto a fifth cycle whichmay (or, as I shall argue,may not) bring the end of the world.Thusthe cycles combineinto progressive,lineartime. It is preciselythis featurethat,as I argue,marksHesiod's important contribution the Greekconceptof historito of city, a very significantstep in the development Greekthought.At this point I disagreewith Vemantandjoin the generalview expressedby Rosenmeyer 1957 (above,n. 5). in 16Thefuturetense startsin line 176f. with o%5(?)...nav)covxatn KataTxov o6t(CocmakKcct (cf. ing an easy transition below the Prophecyof Shulgi [sect. II 2 (b)], althoughI do not wish to make a directconnection).Rosenmeyer("Hesiod"[above, n. 5] 276f. and 633-35 respecuse tively) suspected"modal" of the future,but O6&eet (180) and 'Irov(199) have clearlytemporalmeaning(also see Verdenius'objectionsad 177). As I shallargue,the futuresignalsthe turnto a prophecyaboutthe end of the world;see B. Gatz,Weltalter,goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte Vorstellungen,Spudasmata (Hildesheim1967) 49 (referringto the use of the 16 futurein apocalypticprophecies)and West ad loc. ("prophecy may have been an inherited feature the myth"). of 17Rohde,Psyche (above, n. 12) 95-103 (Engl. 70-74); V. Goldschmidt, "Theologia,"REG 63 (1950) 33-39. Hades was, afterall, the place whithereveryonewent since the days of the bronzeage, with the exceptionof those of the heroicage, andit is an important elementin the structure the myth.This fact invalidatesMatthiessen's of [above,n. 11] 27) objection("Form" againstGoldschmidt's analysis(paceVerdenius, Commentary, 105 n. 435 end). p.

Ludwig Koenen

With this in mind, the audience encounters Hesiod's introduction of the fifth age, a point at which he deliberately alters the introductoryformula employed for the other ages. "I wish," says Hesiod, "I were not part of the fifth age of men, but had died earlier, or would be born later" (grlcK?T' ?icevz' f iv a &3XX' ip6cOs 0av iren Ta tjCucToict xetEival I &v8pd6ctv ()cpeXXovybT) yevcOcat, 174f.). As we stated before, Hesiod's narrativeof the other ages does not speak of a future, a sixth generation of men, whose lives would be better. Nevertheless, his wish is more than a plea not to live in the present age, as critics have assumed.18At least in the early stage of its downwardprogression, the present age will still be a mixture of good and evil (179). The protector spirits of the golden age continue to help men live both justly and prosperously. More important, the paradigm of the heroic age exemplifies the possibility of reversal, for, at that time, humankind was better and more just than in the previous ages (6tKat6oepov Ka api?tov, 158). The deteriorationin the other series of ages is underscoredby the descending value of the metalsgold, silver, bronze, and iron (see above, n. 11). Because the age of heroes reverses this deterioration and is not named after a metal, it is not fully integrated into the rest of the series and signals the possibility of a return to the better. After the tale of the Five Ages, Hesiod poses a riddle (atvoc, 202), a fable illustrating not only the lawlessness of the animal kingdom, but also the threatunder which he lives (202-12). The tale functions as symbol of the hopeless fight which the nightingale/poetputs up against Perses and the "kings,"the men of brute force.19 But then follows Hesiod's admonition to Perses that he
18West applauds, taking line 175 as "polar expression" (E. Kemmer, Die polare in Ausdrucksweise der griechischenLiteratur[Wiirzburg 1903];U. v. Wilamowitz,Euripides Herakles [Darmstadt2 1959] III and G.W. Bond, EuripidesHeracles [Oxford 1981], both to line 1106): "Anythingwould be betterthan this!" as R. Lamberton phrasedit in his Hesiod Thus RosenHaven and London 1988); see Verdeniusad 175 (with furtherliterature). (New the meyerpoints out thatit is probablybest to interpret phrase"as a colloquialescapist term, does but expressinghis revulsionfrom the present," he also explainsthat,"still, the i Z`cetza indicatethatHesiod's mindis not degeneration-fixed" ([above,n. 5] 275-76 and631-33; also see Bianchi,"Razzaaurea" [above,n. 10] 194). Thereis moreto it, I believe. In the contextof the Erga, Hesiod tells the myth so thatit may convincePersesandthe "kings"to mendtheirways. This can only be achievedif thereis hope for avoidingthe end of the world.Vernant correctlystressesthis point ("Lemythe"[above n. 11] 22 and 20 respectively),andWest distinguishesbetweenthe myth,which may not allow a turnfor the better,andHesiod's own feelings, which may allow for such a wish. It is precisely of this wish whichcontainsHesiod's new interpretation the myth. 19Theuse of the word &ot56c(208) mediatesbetween a6rldcv,nightingale(203), and the poet. See Pucci, Hesiod (above, n. 14) 61-81, also S. H. Lonsdale, "Hesiod's Hawk and Nightingale(Op.202-12): Fableor Omen,"Hermes117 (1989) 403-12; West ad 203 observes

Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

not follow the animals, but ratherlisten to Dike (Justice), and thereby reverse the growing presence of Hybris in this world (213-24). Hybris leads both the mighty and the lowly to a bad end, while Dike's path avoids ruin (atri, 216).20 At both the literal level as an address to Perses, and again on the generalizing level as a message to the audience, these admonitions only make sense if there is a glimmer of hope for a more optimistic future, despite the present lawlessness. Next, the admonition to Perses is extended to the kings through the juxtaposition of the just and unjust cities (225-47), an image paralleled, in part, by the prosperous and suffering cities of the Homeric Shield of Achilleus (18.490ff.) and the Aspis of the Hesiodic corpus (237ff.). Hesiod describes the just city in terms that recall his golden age and his Islands of the Blest. Justice brings prosperity (227), child-nourishing peace (?ipTivrl...Kou)poTp6(poc, 228), and festivities (231); earth gives food in abundance (232-34). Children are similar to their parents, i.e. not subject to progressive degeneration. This reverses the present day fate of the iron age.21War first appearedin the age of bronze (145f.) and destroyed those of the heroic age (161ff.), but Zeus does not decree war for the just city (228f.). There is no ruin (a'rq, 231), nor do men travel in ships (236f.), as did the heroes of the Trojan war. Life is becoming a present-day variant of the golden age. Further, this image of the just and prosperous city sets up the possibility that the doom predicted can be avoided through justice. What seemed a preordained future gives way not to
thatthe dove is the hawk's standard on prey in Homer.Cf. his commentary 208 ande.g. VerdeniusandWilamowitz loc. ad 20Fora-TI in Hesiod's Erga in the meaningof "ruin," even specifically"financial and loss," see R. E. Doyle, "ATrl, Use and Meaning(New York 1984) 23-25. its otKo6ra T?cKVa 6 21TiKTO1UCtV yuva iicc Yovecit, 235; o6o'8?Tcrzip xcai6ecctv ogoitoc ou6? -ce rc?ai5c, 182. Even if the meaningof 6goitoc is morespecific thanthe generalsimilarithe ty expressedby cotuc6Ka, two lines seem to be related.Moreover,if the similarityof the children with their parents denies genealogical degeneration (R. Renehan, "Progress in Hesiod," CP 75 [1980] 339-58, esp. 349f.), then the just city is liberatedfrom the process, not dominating only the sequenceof Hesiod'sages, butalso the historyof the present-dayiron age. The meaningof booitoc is much debated,but can be derivedfrom an originalmeaning "going to the same place"and thus to denote equal goals, equalmindedness (Verdeniustakes 182 booitoc as equivalentto o66oppwv), althoughin Homerthe word,used for war anddeath, has only negative connotations (A. Athanassakis,RhM 119 [1976] 4-7). iotKc6a ?Kva( yov?cit recalls curses, where the phrase is contrastedwith giving birth to monsters (e.g. Aischin., Ktes. 111; Verdeniusad 235), but in the descriptionof the just city it seems to be primarilyconcernedwith morality(Renehan[above] esp. 349f., cf. 348 on 182). It is in this sense thatthe iotlKc'ra'rTKV yove?ct of thejust city reversethe childrenof the iron age that are not ogoitot with their fathers.The word is chosen for its similaritywith Oguotoc. later A time thoughtthatmaritalfidelity was the groundfor the similarity(Theokritos XVII 63f., cf. 53-57; see Wilamowitz' commentary).

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the creation of a subsequent new age, but to a reversal of the downward descent of this fifth age. It is in this sense that Hesiod wishes to be born at a later time-after the turning point (cf. the discussion in n. 18). His seemingly casual wish, once it is coupled with his concept of an heroic age and the image of the just city, refashions the doomed and descending cycles of history into a linear future that flows continuously out of the present-because life lived morally has the capacity to reverse the doom and the direction of history.22In intellectual terms, this represents a gigantic step not only toward the development of a concept of linear time that stretches through history from past to present and on to the future, but also toward the development of the moral principle based upon individual responsibility. II. Oriental Myths Hesiod's own text and structurecarry us this far. His decisive step from spiraling cycles to linear history, from unavoidable destruction to moral responsibility, emerges, I shall now argue, from a Greek amalgam of concepts acquired and acculturatedover the course of many centuries from areas far beyond the Greek mainland. Martin L. West has emphasized Hesiod's debt to the genre of Admonition literature, widespread in the ancient world, and has reminded us that Hesiod's description of the diptych of just and unjust cities is paralleled in Leviticus (26) and Deuteronomy (28) by pairs of Jahweh's blessings for those who obey the law and curses for those who do not.23We have also noted above that Hesiod's narrativeof the heroic age was not fully integratedinto the series of ages named after metals (above and n. 11). This fact is furtherconfirmed by an additional inconsistency. The analogy of the other ages and the logic of the story should preclude any genealogical continuity between the age of the heroes and the present age. Yet, Hesiod's wording eschews this conclusion. Instead of saying that Zeus created the fifth or the iron age, he surpriseshis audience with the wish that he not live in the fifth age. Through this deviation from the usual
Heubeckspeaksof contribution. 22Seealreadyabove,n. 15 and,in particular, Rosenmeyer's which resulted from the poet's attemptto Konstruktion" a new "geschichtsphilosophische combine oriental ideas with traditionalGreek views and which he tried to fit into the intentionsof the Erga ("Mythologische [(above, n. 2] 510 and Vorstellungen" paradigmatic 548, respectively).As Nicolai observes(HesiodsErga [above,n. 7], 49f.), the notionthatmen could live almost as happily as the gods, provided they practicedjustice, permeates the of description all five ages. 23In the introductionto his commentary,West discusses Sumerian,Akkadian,Egyptian, Aramaic,Hebrew, Indian,Irish, and Norse wisdom literatureas well as a numberof more recentor more recentlyrecordedexamples(pp. 3-25). For Jahweh'sblessings and curses for those obedient and disobedientto the law, see his comm. to 225-47, where he specifically refersto Lev. 26 andDeut. 28. See also Walcot,Hesiod (above,n. 11), chapt."DidacticLiteraturein Greeceandthe NearEast"(80-103).

Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

11

form of transition between the ages, Hesiod avoids a violation of his own and the Greeks' sense of continuity between themselves and the heroes.24Hence, I agree with scholars who have argued that Hesiod is here transforminga story of Four Ages, current in his own time, by inserting a characteristicallyGreek story about an age of heroes.25 1. Zoroastrian, Indian, and Jewish Apocalyptic Ideas? The recognition of an original series of four metallic ages does not mean that this feature derives from Easter sources-as has been argued on the basis
24Verdeniusstates that the presentage "is not especially created by the gods because it consists of the descendants the men who lived in the heroicage"(ad 174, p. 105;cf. ad 158 of with n. 416). But againstJ. Rudhardt, mytheh6siodique races et celui de Prometh6e," "Le des Rev. europ. d. sciences soc. 19 (1981) no. 58, 245-81, esp. 248f., Verdeniusmaintainsthat not the entirepopulationof the present-dayiron age descendsfrom the heroes.Hesiod's text, the however,says nothingaboutsuch descent,and the fact thatZeus transplants entireage of heroesto the Islandsof the Blest (above,n. 12) precludesthis assumption. laterpoet triedto A fromthe age of the heroesto the ironage moresmoothly(173a-e) and,as bridgethe transition it seems,includedthe formalstatement Zeuscreated new age (173d;cf. West). that the 25Most scholarswho have discussed the myth of the Ages have come to this conclusion. "DasZeitalter" Matthiessen, (above,n. 12) acceptsthe validityof the orientalparallelsto which R. Reizensteinhas drawncriticalattention of (below, n. 26) andarguesthatthe destruction the age of the heroesby itself belongs to the wide-spreadtype of myth thatcontrastsan idealized first age to the presentage (see below section III). In Matthiessen'sview, then, Hesiod combinedtwo stories,each of whichin a different way reflectsessentiallythe samemythof the destructionof an original,mightiermankindand the subsequent creationof the less perfecthumanitythat we all know. Othershave found differentexplanationsfor the inconsistenciesin Hesiod's text: Wilamowitzthoughtthatthe bronzeage andthe presentage originallywere the same and were divided by insertingthe age of the heroes (commentary, 139f.; for M. P. p. Nilsson's rejectionof this notionsee n. 26). The resultwouldbe an originalmythof only three ages (for the Orphicssee M. L. West, The OrphicPoems [Oxford 1983], 75 and 107 and cf. see 118; for otherattestations, von Fritz,"Pandora" [above, n. 12] 232 and 373, respectively, n. 16). Walcot believed that the originalmyth consistedonly of the first four ages (above, n. 11). Vernant's structuralanalysis (above n. 11) divides the fifth age into two contrasting phases,the presentphaseandthe futurephasethatwill be even worse.Thushe finds threepairs of contrasting classes. Thereis ages, each pairreflectingone of G. Dum6zil's"indo-european" not muchtextualevidenceto support eitherof thesearguments; Matthiessen, cf. "Form" (above, n. 11)26 n. 4. And the evidencefor this tripartite structure Greeksocietyis quiteinsufficient: in G. S. Kirk,Myth (Cambridge1970) 210; Matthiessen,"Form"29f.; D. Boedekerfinds this division in the functionsof Hekatein the "hymn" Hekateof Theogony411-52to tripartite non liquet:Hesiod does not see the one who sacrifices/prays (416-19) and the king (434) as the representing samereligio-legal andsocial function.In pointof fact, sacrificingandpraying arenot the specificprivilegeof any social class, whetherone looks to this "hymn" ('epcovi?pa
.I

eIxa.c)or to Greekculturein general. The tensionsand inconsistenciesbetweendetailsof the mythof the ages andHesiod's own intentionsarereal. Nonetheless,they seem to have been acceptableto Hesiod, probablyas the resultof the aestheticthatdevelopedundertheinfluenceof oralpoetry.

'cr ictIcciCKc?t 'EKarcTv. oXkkI o'ti'CezTo Ttgi 1I...

ye np6qoppov Oac& no76c?etat

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of similarities to Zoroastrianismand later Jewish and Indian beliefs.26 The eschatology of the oldest layers of Zoroastrianismportrays a final period of evil, at the end of which a savior of the world comes to conquer the evil spirit. But, as the Iranist Mary Boyce has pointed out,27it was only toward the end of the 5th century BC that this basic structureevolved into an elaborate scheme of a world period of 12,000 years. A savior appears at the end of each of the last three millennia and establishes a new and better time, but at the end of both the first and second millennia the renewal is followed by a recrudescence of evil. Some variations on this scheme are early Hellenistic, or even more recent. Nevertheless, it is of particularinterest here that in Pahlevi versions, four ages of the present millennium of Zoroaster are distinguished according to metals: gold, silver, steel, and "intermixed" iron. According to Mary Boyce, "intermixed iron" means 'ironstone,' hence iron still mixed with dross ("Zoroastrian Apocalyptic" [above, n. 12] 71f.). She also points out that elaborate world-age schemes and their characterizationby metals are absent from older Zoroastrian apocalypticism, again suggesting their introduction into the story in an early Hellenistic milieu. Other evidence comes from the prophetic dream of Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel (2), written about 166 BC. In the dream, the king saw four future kingdoms beneath the image of a mammoth statue, whose various parts were composed of four metals-gold, silver, bronze, iron and, for the feet, a mixture of iron and clay. This mixture is most likely a misunderstandingof the "intermixed"iron in the Iranian text, making it likely that the metals reached the book of Daniel via an Iranian tale (M. Boyce, ibidem). Indian texts present the concept of four subsequent world26For the following see R. Reitzenstein, "AltgriechischeTheologie und ihre Quellen," IV der Vortrdge BibliothekWarburg (Leipzig 1924/25) 1-19 (repr.in Hesiod,WdF [above,n. 2], 523-44) and idem in R. Reitzenstein-H.H. Schaeder,Studienzum antikenSynkretismus VII StudienderBibliothek aus Iran undGriechenland, Warburg (LeipzigandBerlin 1926), 38on. (above,n. 16) 1-51; West ad 106-201 (withmoreliterature p. 177). M. 68; Gatz, Weltalter P. Nilsson rejectedboth ideas-namely, that in the story on the Ages Hesiod was following orientalmyth and that he insertedthe age of the heroes and the iron age into an older story [1928] 1652; Geschichteder grieconsisting of only three ages (Deutsche Literaturzeitung 5. 1967], 622 n. chischen Religion I, Handb.d. Altertumswissenschaft Abt. II 1 [Miinchen3 in (above,n. 12) 67-75. Also see my summary "ManiApocalyptic" 27Boyce,"Zoroastrian of at Jewish,andChristian Thought," chaeanApocalypticism the Crossroads Iranian, Egyptian, Codex Manichaicus Coloniensis, Atti del Simposio Interazionale (Rende-Amantea3-7, di CentroInterdepartimentale Scienze settembre1984), UniversitaDegli StudiDella Calabria, Religiose (Cosenza 1986) 285-332, esp. 308f.; S. S. Hartmann,"Datierung der jungWorldand the Near East, in in avestischenApokalyptik," Apocalypticism the Mediterranean Proceedings of the InternationalColloquiumon Apocalypticism,Uppsala, 12-17 August, 1979, ed. D. Hellholm(Tiibingen1983) 61-75, esp. the tableon p. 63.
1).

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

13

ages, each decreasing in length and in righteousness, but characterizedby the metallic colors white, red, yellow, and black. Again these concepts occur only in comparatively late texts, probably reflecting Hellenistic speculation after the time of Alexander. In short, Hesiod provides the earliest attestation for the metallic ages, and at this point I must partnot only with Reitzenstein, Gatz, and West, who thought that Hesiod's metallic ages were following Zoroastrianor Babylonian configurations (see n. 26), but also with Burkert, who posited an Aramaic sibyl of the 8th century as the common source for Hesiod and Daniel, because for historical reasons, the influence of Iranian apocalypticism on Hesiod is virtually excluded.28Rather,the concept of metallic eras moved from Hesiod to Zoroastrianism,and from there to the book of Daniel and to India. When Reitzenstein drew attention to Zoroastrianeschatology, he was impressed by what seemed to be similarities between late, even medieval, Zoroastrian apocalypticism and an oracle found on a papyrus, the so-called Oracle of the Potter, which claims to be, and probably is, a Greek translation of an Egyptian original.29The composition of the two extant versions can be dated to
im in 28"Apokalyptik friihenGriechentum: ImpulseundTransformationen," Apocalypticism He (above, n. 27) 235-54 (with bibliography). finds indirectsupportin a prophetictext from around700 BC writtenon the plasterof a stele in a templein Deir 'Alla in Palestine,now conSemiticMonovenientlyavailablein J.A. Hackett,TheBalaamTextfromDeir 'Alla,Harvard graphs 31, Chico 1980. For the view that this prophecy is partially related to Egyptian prophecies,see Koenen,"Manichaean (above,n. 27) 329 andn. 122. Apocalypticism" 29Fortext and interpretation Koenen,ZPE 2 (1968) 178-209; 3 (1968) 137f., 13 (1974) see 313-19; 54 (1984) 9-13 (on the date); J. Assmann, "K6nigsdogmaund Heilserwartung. Politische und Kultische Chaosbeschreibungen agyptischenTexten" in Apocalypticism in (above, n. 27) 345-77, esp. 362-64; F. Dunand,"L'oracledu potier"in L'apocalyptique, Et.d'hist.des rel. 3, Universit6des Sc. Hum. de Strasbourg, Centrede Rech. d'Hist. des Rel. um (Paris 1977) 41-67; R. Kearns,Das Traditionsgefiige den Menschensohn (Tiibingen1986) 110-42; D. Frankfurter, Elijah in UpperEgypt.The Apocalypseof Elijahand Early Egyptian Christianity,Studiesin Antiquity& Christianity (Minneapolis1993) 159f. nn. 1-3, and 17491; Koenen,"Manichaean lit(above,n. 27) 317f. with n. 94 (with additional Apocalypticism" and hereis the DemoticOracleof the Lamb(K. erature) 321-32. Anothertext to be considered in Zauzich,"DasLammdes Bokchoris," Festschriftzum 100-jdhrigenBestehender PapyrusRainer[Wien 1983] I Nationalbibliothek, sammlungder Osterreichischen PapyrusErzherzog 165-74, a text usually discussed in tandem with the Oracle of the Potter). The strongest for of argument Reitzenstein'sderivation the Oracleof the Potterfrom Iranian apocalypticism was its use of the term"bearers the girdle"(wcovo(6pot)for the evil-doers, a termthatreof mindedhimof the girdleof the demonsin the medievalBahman-Yasht (Studien[above,n. 26], in 44f.; G. Widengren,"LeitendeIdeenund Quellender iranischen Apokalyptik," Apocalypticism [above, n. 27], 77-162, esp. 108 and 114). But the termcan be explainedas of Egyptian in originandmay have been an oracular expressionfor "enemies" HellenisticEgypt(as a word employed specifically for the Gauls, see L. Koenen,"Die AdaptionAgyptischerK6nigsideoin logie am Ptolemiierhof," Egyptand the HellenisticWorld,Proceedingsof the International Colloquium, 24-26 May 1982, Studia Hellenistica 27 [1985] 143-90, esp. 181-83 and n. 106). If W. Clarysse correctly recognized the term in the name of a tomb in the Theban

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about 130 BC. This Oracle, however, belongs to an Egyptian tradition which reaches back at least to the Prophecy of Neferti, an Egyptian text of 1991 BC, although it pretends to be 500 years older.30While the parallels between the Egyptian and the late Zoroastriandescriptions of calamity may be independent responses to similar social and political turmoil, I now think it possible that Egyptian tradition had an influence on Zoroastrianism(Koenen, "Manichaean Apocalypticism" [above, n. 27] 329f.). That problem cannot be pursued here, but Egyptian and Akkadian traditionsnow merit attention. 2. Egyptian and Akkadian traditions I shall start with a brief preamble. The Egyptian and the Akkadian poems were produced in writing31 and knew limited circulation among scribes and noblemen; some poetry was meant only for the dead king, as is the case with one example I shall use. We nevertheless can assume that motifs expressed in such poems also reached the oral culture, as scribes told the stories to their families and friends. That is to say, differences between the scribal cultures of the Egyptians and the Akkadians on the one hand, and early Greek oral culture on the other, do not preclude a transferal of concepts and narrative patterns from the one group to the other. (a) Egyptian Prophecies and Myth First, then, we turn to Egyptian prophecies that proceed according to the following narrativepattern.They characterizepresent time as chaos and disaster, and envision the coming of a new king, the embodiment and bringer of maat (justice). We have already seen that the concept of justice's restorationis a key element in Hesiod. The death of the Egyptian king means disintegration
Enchoria18 [1991] 177f.),thenthe Greek (snwpwrs; necropolis,"thetombof the zonophoros" word was used by Egyptians, whetherit denoted a "memberof the army or police force" (Clarysse),or a foreigner(Gaul),or some otherstrangeperson.The termmay also have been usedin the prophecyin the templeof Deir 'Ala (above,n. 25; see Koenen,"Manichaean Apocalypticism"[above, n. 27], 329). des 30W.Helck,Die Prophezeiungen Nfr-tj,Kleine agyptischeTexte (Wiesbaden1970);M. I Literature (Berkeley-LosAngeles-London1973) 139-5; ANET AncientEgyptian Lichtheim, (Princeton3 1969) 444-46 (J. A. Wilson) and 676. For the interpretation,see Assmann, XIId Elijah (above,n. 29) 168-73; Koedynastie(Paris 1956) 21-60 and 145-57; Frankfurter, see nen, "Manichaean (above, n. 27) 314f.; for a differentinterpretation, H. Apocalypticism" Goedicke,TheProtocolof Neferyt,The JohnHopkinsNearEasternStudies(Baltimore1977). in 31p. Michalowski,"OralityandLiteracyand EarlyMesopotamian Literature," Mesopotamian Epic Literature, Oral or Aural?, ed. by M. F. Vogelzang and H. L. J. Vanstiphout (Lew"K6nigsdogma" (above, n. 29) 357-61; G. Posener, Litterature etpolitique dans l'Egypte de la

des zur iston 1992) 227-45. See also M. Reichel, "Grazistische Bemerkungen Struktur Giland 1992) 187-208. Theory87, ed. by B. BrogyanyiandR. Lipp (Amsterdam Philadelphia
gamesch-Epos" in Historical Philology: Greek, Latin, Romance, Current Issues in Linguistic

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

15

of all order, and the new king comes to create the world anew out of chaos, just as the Egyptian gods are believed to have done in the beginning. The king's coming inaugurates a new and better time during which earth and men again prosper through peace and stability. Such events reflect the people's historical experiences, and the Egyptian belief in permanentrenewal of cycles makes historical sufferings understandableand bearable. The prophecies are an expression of these beliefs in cyclical renewal throughthe appearanceof the new king on his throne. Just as we saw in Hesiod, the Egyptian prophecies are in part ex eventu and thus establish the credibility of predictions for the future. But they are also an integral part of pharaonic ritual, royal ideology and propaganda, and they are grounded in the belief that the world must forever be renewed.32 The concept of an evil present, linked together with the hope for the advent of the good king also entered Egyptian Wisdom literature as we know it in the Admonitions of Ipuwer, written about 1300 BC.33 Yet by Ptolemaic times, when Egyptians could no longer hope for an indigenous ruler, amelioration of the human condition was expected only with the beginning of a new, great cycle. Soon after this modulation the tradition turned apocalyptic,34 possibly under Persian influence. A good example of the affinity between Hesiod and the Egyptian tradition lies in Hesiod's prophecy of the bad things that will occur during the present fifth age. In the passage Hesiod concentrateson the moral decay of society and specifically of the family:
"Thefatherwill not be of equalmindwith his children,andthe children not at all of equalmindwith theirfather[see above, n. 21]. Nor will the guest be friend to the host, companionto companion,and brotherto brother,as before. Forthwiththey will pay no honor to their aging parents.Naturally,they will quarrelwith them in harsh words, hardand hearted, not knowingthe revengeof the gods"(182-87).35

32Forliterature this point, see nn. 28f. on Anc. Egypt.Lit. I (above, n. 30) 149-63; ANET3 441-44 (J. A. Wilson) and 33Lichtheim, 676; also see Assmann,"Konigsdogma" (above,n. 29) 347-51. 34L.Koenen,"TheProphecies a Potter: Prophecy WorldRenewalBecamean Apocaof A of International lypse"in Proceedingsof the Twelfth Congressof Papyrology,ASP 7, ed. by D. H. Samuel(Toronto1970) 249-54. a'raipoc 350o68. mCatip cai6Scci bOgoioc oi068) t ac6Sec, I o06ie tEivoc etVvo86KpKXai , pioc cc?a xc xO dpoc iep. I alvea 65 myrpacKovTac cctc EtaipO) I o'6*5 KaciyvrTzo pio &argilco-OctToKiac I gRexrov'at 6' apa rotc Zaxrtioic 0pd~ov'rec i[Ctcct I cXzEXtot o06i
Oeov OdnIv ei656?c. See Koenen, "Manichaean Apocalypticism" (above, n. 27) 327f., with additional parallel texts. See also the Akkadian texts quoted below.

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The Egyptian Prophecy of Neferti (above, n. 30) from the beginning of the second millennium BC knows similar societal dissolution: "I show you the son as enemy, the brother as foe, a man slaying his father" (44f.). The Admonitions oflpuwer (above, n. 33) describes the same evils: "A man regardshis son as his enemy... A man strikes his maternal brother" (1.5 and 5.11). In the Hellenistic Oracle of the Potter the elaboration of evils is magnified: "At this generation there will be [war and ... murder(?)] between brothers and spouses; ... And the slaves will be freed and their masters will not have food. The virgins will be corrupted by their parents, the father (?) will thrust off the husband from his daughter, and there will be marriages between sons and mothers. Male slaves (or male children) will be dishonored by force." (P3 24f.; 46f.).36 The Christian Gospels predict: "Brotherwill deliver brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise against their parents and kill them",37 and in the late Iranian Yamasp Namag the mother will sell her daughter (17), the son will strike his father and mother and deprive them of their authority, the younger brother will strike his older brother and take his possessions (18).38 According to the Bahman Yasht, the friendship between father and son and between brotherswill disappear(II 30). At this point I postpone the evaluation of the striking similarities of phrases and images that occurred over the course of more than 2,600 years and in a wide range of Mediterraneanand Mesopotamiancountries, but I shall provide one other example. We noted Hesiod's wish that he had not been bom in the present age. The Admonitions of Ipuwer says simply: "Great and small <say>: 'I wish I were dead"' (4.13). According to the late ZoroastrianYamasp Namag it were better not to be born at all, or straightway to die (70; see n. 37). Earlier, the Apocalypse of Baruch refers to Jeremiah (20.14) and says: "Happy the man who was never born, or the child who died as child" (10.6). In
36Forthe edition see n. 29; the text is extantin threeversions. P1 (P. Graf G 29787; 2nd the narrative; othertwo versions,P2(P. RainerG. 19813; cent.) containsonly the introductory 3rd century)and P3 (P. Oxy. XXII 2332, late 3rd. cent.), are parallelversions which by and Reitzen stein but statements, the wordingis at timesdifferent. largecontainthe sameprophetic ' xoB ye(above, n. 26) could not yet know the Oxyrhynchuspapyrus. P3 24ff. r[o]6.oxo
] 10ff. c ec'rat xrv a&XecpCov I [Kai TCxv yagercov. P2 v[o0]c I[7i60xeloc Kai (povoc &a? (o[Uc]Kiai [r&c X?e ToxTo[V Txoj] y[?vo]V.c I [i6EUg6oc Kai (pvoc] c'rait oc KaiT0o)c oi Ka[i] oi K5ptot ya]g'TaE&c) I &[v?eei]. P3 44ff. Kai ?o)X<(oi> e?eue0?pro06covXat z in Neferti and Ipuwer). Kai a(i ap90 vait I.(6) aiXD&vII3io(vo) 6eIOn'cov(rat) (similarly 'T V yovicov I Tov I av5pa Kai &aocicacet Kai 6 (ica'T)p icOvTaxpboc 0(papilcovxat grnTpoyagot 'icov'ai. Kaira &pcevtKa 7cati5a I .taio.[c] aicXvv0ricov[x]at. cKat EicKat caTrl:p TcKVOV, aOvagov 7'capa6ckCet 58 &??0(p6c deX(p6ov etc ?i cKai Oavarcoo-ociv a'ro'6c, Matt. 10. 21 par. avacxrlcovXat rKcva yoveic 38E. Benveniste, "Une apocalypse pehlevie: leZamasp-Namak," RHR 106 (1932) 337-80.

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the Apocalypse of Esdras, "it were better for man not to have been bor, better not to be alive" (I 21); etc. (see Koenen, "ManichaeanApocalypticism" [above, n. 27] 326f.). Hesiod's voice seems to borrow and adapt a topos already developed in ancient Egyptian texts. And, in doing so, he turns that topos into a cue that prompts us to see the entire passage as tendering a glimmer of hope. The Egyptian prophecies reflect a view of history and ritual in which each good king begins a cycle of renewal. Other Egyptian tales point to larger cycles of past history. In the Egyptian myth of the Cow of Heaven,39 a narrative found in the royal tombs of kings from the 14th to 12th century BC, and therefore contemporary with the Admonitions of Ipuwer. Rhe, the Egyptian sun god and divine king, becomes old and tired after ruling over an aboriginal kingdom in which gods and men lived together. Men rebelled against Rhe; he called an assembly of the gods and with their agreementdispatched Hathor,the eye of Rhe. The fire of Hathor slew the men in the desert, and thus, by "diminishing the population" Rhe's power over mankind was reestablished. Hathor, however, was about to continue her slaughter, when Rhe decided to save mankind; he ordered beer brewed in order to cover the land like a Nile flood. In Egyptian thinking, the beer is the Nile flood that covers the land every year. Hathor got drunk from the beer and no longer recognized the targets of her rage. Mankind was saved, and Rhe, having separated heaven and earth, withdrew to Heaven. The story goes on to tell how the new world was made to function and how its order was established. From this time forth, men rejoined the gods only after death. Like Hesiod's story of the Five Ages, the Egyptian myth is an aetiological tale that explains the present order of the world and its maintenance through annual renewal. On the mythical level, it narratesa revolution against the chief deity, the near destruction of men by fire, their salvation through a flood, and the separationof men from the gods, whereby mankindlost the divine companionship that characterized previous times. Under this dispensation, men were reunited with the gods only in the afterlife. Rhe has limbs of gold, bones of silver, and hair of lapis lazuli, so that what was a traditionaldescription of gods' bodies is here manipulated into a description of Rhe's body, now grown old

39Thetext has been newly studied(with text, translation, commentary) E. Hornung and by with A. Brodbeck,H. Schlogl, and E. Staehelin,and with a contribution (in collaboration by G. Fecht),Der AgyptischeMythosvon der Himmelskuh. Eine Atiologiedes Unvollkommenen, OrbisBiblicuset Orientalis (Freiburg 46 transla[Schweiz]andG6ttingen1982).Earlier partial tions: M. Lichtheim,Ancient EgyptianLiteratureII (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1976) 197-99; ANET310f. (J.A. Wilson).

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(5-7).40 The tale gives voice to concepts drawn from Egyptian myth, ritual, and the geographical conditions of the Nile valley. Nevertheless, there are also elements shared with Hesiod: the two distinct periods of Rhe's rule correspond, respectively, to the rule of Kronos over the first two ages and to Zeus' subsequent rule (cf. above, nn. 7 and 25). At the same time they also correspond, respectively, to the gods' life among the heroes and their separationfrom men in the present-day world. We shall soon revisit such beliefs when we turn to the Catalogue of Women. In the present context it is sufficient to point to the fact that sandwiched in between the two periods of Rhe's rule lies the near destruction of mankind by fire.41 (b) Akkadian Prophecies and Myth Some Akkadian prophecies are very similar in structureto the Egyptian prophecies which we have been discussing. The so-called Uruk-prophecy, written probably at the beginning of the 6th century under NebuchadnezzarII, predicts, ex eventu, a long series of bad kings and the final restorationof Uruk under a good king.42The extant portion of Shulgi's Prophecy, probably dating
40SeeHornung'scommentary, 52 (6) andcf. the Sumerianstoryof "Enkiand Nihursag" p. (below, n. 57). Probablyin the 2nd centurythe idea of the aging andrenewalof the worldwas taken up in the Apocalypse of Asklepios of the Hermetic Corpus (extant in Latin, ed. with commentaryby A. D. Nock and A.-J.Festugiere II [chapt. 24-26], and in Coptic, ed. by aus und Martin KrauseandPahorLabib,Gnostische hermetische Schriften CodexII undCodex in 1971], pp. 194-200; translation The VI,Abh. d. DAI Kairo,KoptischeReihe II [Gluiickstadt 1988], 334-36): 26 haec et talis Nag HammadiLibrary,ed. J. M. Robinson[San Francisco3 but senectus venietmundi.This apocalypseemergedin the Egyptiantradition, it is also much and obliged to Stoic notionsaboutthe destruction renewalof the worldthroughflood andfire, Apocaand,in this context,it takesup a passageof Plato(Tim.22C; see Koenen,"Manichaean lypticism" [above, n. 27] 318-21 with n. 95). The concept of the world's old age held a in fascinationfor currents the Romanview of the world(for example,Lucr.2.1150particular 53), particularly in late antiquity; see R. Haussler, "Vom Ursprung und Wandel des Hermes 92 (1964) 313-41; F. Vittinghoff,"Zum geschichtlichen Lebensaltervergleiches," Hist. der 529-74, esp. 563-73. Verstiindnis Spaitantike," Zeitschrift 41The destruction the world by fire is an ubiquitousmotif which, however,Hesiod does of not apply. 42H. Hunger and S.A. Kaufmann,"A New Akkadian Prophecy Text," Journal of the im AmericanOriental Society 95 (1975) 371-75; P. Hoffken, "Heilszeitherrschererwartung Die Raum," Weltdes Orients9 (1977) 51-71 (see also n. 46). For the similarity babylonischen between Akkadianand Egyptianprophecies,see R. Borger,"GottMardukund Gott-Konig BibliothecaOrientalis28 (1971) 3-24, esp. 23f. This similarityis much Sulgi als Propheten," closer thanthe few passagesI quotecan indicate.In Marduk's Prophecy(see n. 45) the god dewhenhe desertedBabylonandtraveledto the Hittites,Asas scribespastmisfortunes occurring syrians, and Elamites; each time he returnedto Babylon in order to bring new prosperity deitiesareabsentfromUruk his predictsthatthe tutelary through presence.The Uruk-prophecy In when the good king appears. the EgyptianOracle of the in evil times and are thenreturned, Lamband the Oracle of the Potter the new king of bettertimes bringsback the statuesof the

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from the end of the second millennium BC, although it pretends to be much earlier, starts with the good deeds of king Shulgi and continues with a prophetic review of Babylonian history, focusing on evil times under subsequent kings who will throw the land into complete disorder (?).43 "So long as he is king, fighting and warfare will not cease (cf. n. 16). In that reign brother will devour his brother, people will barter their children for silver, the lands will be thrown into complete disorder. Husbandwill forsake wife, wife will forsake husband.44 Mother will bar her door against daughter,"and so forth. "Friend will slay his friend with a weapon, companion will destroy companion with a weapon, [the lands] will be totally destroyed."At the close comes the prediction of a restoration of good times under the new king. In the Prophecy of God Marduk, a text probably composed in or soon after 1124 BC, the god tells of his peregrinationsand predicts his final reconciliation with Babylon at the time of a new king, probably Nebuchanezzar.4sDuring the evil time: "Brotherconsumed brother, comrade slew his comrade with a weapon, free citizens spread out their hands (to beg of) the poor!", and so forth. Then Mardukwill return, and under this rule of a good and pious king better times will commence, when "brotherwill have consideration for brother, son will revere father like a god. Mother will [be friend with (?)] daughter,bride will be mar[ried] and r[evere] her husband. There will always be consideration among the people. The young man will [always bear] his burden (?). This prince will [rule all] lands." In another text, which seems to belong to a different, but related type of prophecy, mention of astronomical phenomena leads to long series of predictions. Twice the gods decide to restorekingship; twice the country falls back into bad times, although at the end a new interventionby the gods is possible. The bad times after the first attempt of restoring kingship include revolution: "the entire land will rebel against the prince who will sit on the throne,""city [will
them away. The returnof the statuesbecomes one of the gods, afterenemies have plundered standard duties of the king. In the Oracle of the Potter Alexandriawill be destroyedwhen its to see "Akkadian god returns Memphis.For a surveyof the Akkadian prophecies, H. Ringgren, Apocalypses,"in Apocalypticism(above, n. 27) 379-86. I note in passing that some of the Akkadian in propheciesintersperse good reignswith evil ones, a featurewhich laterreappears of for of apocalypses the Judaeo-Christian tradition, examplein the apocalypse Elijah. 43B. R. Foster,Before the Muses. An Anthologyof Akkadian Literature(Bethesda,Maryland, 1993) I 270-72; Borger (see n. 42); A. K. Grayson and W. G. Lambert,"Akkadian Journ.of Cuneiform Studies18 (1964) 7-30, text C. Prophecies," 44WhileI printFoster's translation, this sentenceI adopt the renditionof Borger and for (Text C iii [p. 21]). Borgerhas "Manwill forsakemaid, maid will forsake Grayson-Lambert man." 45Foster(above, n. 43) 304-07; Borger (see n. 42). In one of the lacunaeI have addeda will [be friendwith (?)] daughter"). phrase"Thisprince" The guess ("Mother refersto the new in king whose good reignis predicted muchdetail.

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turn against] city, family will turn against family, brother will slay brother, friend will slay friend."46The sequence of bad times and good times are, in effect, cyclic catastrophesand restorations. A different kind of Akkadian literature, The Song ofAtrahasis,47 is attested in several versions, the oldest of which was written in the 17th century BC. Assyrian copies were still available in the 7th century. Part of the Song also survives in a 13th-century copy from Ugarit, a locality with closer ties to Greece. The text has attracted classicists' attentions mainly because it begins with three chief gods dividing the world by lot: Anu received heaven; Enki, the water of Apsu; Enlil, the lower earth, very much as Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades cast lots to apportion Heaven, Ocean, and the Underworld in the Iliad.48 At present, however, we are interested in the manner in which the Akkadian story periodicizes its narrative. All history is divided into five periods. A first period of perhaps 2,500 or 3,600 years,49prior to the creation of mankind, is followed by three subsequent periods of twelve hundredyears each,50 and finally
46R.D. Biggs, "MoreBabylonian'Prophecies,"' Iraq 29 (1967) 117-32, lines 14-16 (text B in Grayson's and Lambert's"Akkadian Prophecies"[above, n. 43]). The connectionof this sign is prophecywith astrologicaloraclesis certain,but in the maintext a single astronomical followed by a ratherlong predictioncovering an extendedperiod of time and the reigns of severalkings. Laterastrologicalpropheciesshow, at least in principle,the same phenomenon. For example, CCAG VII 143.12ff. (Nechepso and Petosiris)predicts that a great man will therewill be civil whentheinvader invadeEgyptfromAsia andcapture departs, Egypt'sleader; war with rebellion, upheaval of the political and social order, murder,larceny, etc. The prophecy is, I believe, ex eventu, referringto the invasion by Antiochos IV, the captureof periodof civil strife. Philometor,the returnof Antiochosto Syria (twice), andthe subsequent Thus the astrologicalconstellationleads to a "prophecy" encompassingthe period between about 170 and 163 BC, if not longer. The language and the spirit of these astrological suchas the Oracleof thePotter(above,nn. 29 and36), is prophecies quitesimilarto prophecies and it is significantthat the front side of the tabletwith the Urukprophecy(on the back;see above, n. 42) containsbothprotasesandapodosesof omens. 47Foster(above, n. 43) 158-201; Lambertand Millard,Atra-hasis. The BabylonianStory of the Flood (Oxford 1969); J. Bott6ro and S. M. Kramer,Lorsque les dieux faisaient l'homme. Mythologie mesopotamienne(Paris 1989); S. Dalley, Mythfrom Mesopotamia 104-09 (E. A. Speiser)and 512-14 (A. K. Grayson). (Oxford 1989) 9-38; ANET3 Near EasternInfluenceon GreekCulturein the Revolution. The 48W.Burkert, Orientalizing Mass., London1992) (Cambridge, EarlyArchaicAge, transl.by M. E. PinderandW. Burkert 88-92. 49LineI 37; 2,500 with W. von Soden'sreadingandrestoration 68 [1978] 56; accepted (ZA [above, n. 47]). S. Dalley restores3,600 years, i.e. 1 saros or 6 neroi of by Bott6ro-Kramer 600 yearsin the chronologyused by Berossosof Babylon,BabylonikaII, FGrH 680 F 3.(10) (S. M. Burstein,TheBabylonicaofBerossus [Malibu1978]II 1.2 p. 18); see n. 50; alia alii. of the occursin the formulawhich introduces destruction men:"Twelvehun50Thenumber dred years had not gone by" (extant in lines I 352 and 416 = II 1; also restoredin the late is Assyrianversionat I iv 1). The number writtenby a repetitionof 600; 600 yearsare 1 neros The Orient.Revolution(above, n. 48) in Berossos' chronology(see n. 49). Also see Burkert,

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by a fifth on-going period after the creation of the present world. The Zoroastrian division of the world-period into four periods, for a total of twelve thousand years, as noted earlier, appears to be a later application of the older Babylonian paradigm. Equally, if we leave aside the original period before humankind was created, we encounter four periods and three attempts at the destruction of humankind. This structureis similar to that of the myth followed by Hesiod, although the Atrahasis story does not specifically tell us that men deteriorated from one age to the next, focusing instead on the destruction of mankind and the gods' quarrels. I cannot engage in a full comparison of this story with Greek mythology, but I may briefly discuss a few relevant details. In the Song of Atrahasis, the gods are divided into two groups. On one side are the chief gods who are older and, on the other, the lesser and younger gods, the sons of Anu. Originally, the younger gods lived without toil, but subsequently they were forced to dig out the river-beds and mound up the mountains, in order that the chief gods have food.51 The younger gods revolted, forcing the older gods to acknowledge that the younger gods' work load was too heavy. The older deities slew one of the younger gods, and this sacrifice served as purification of the lesser gods for their earlier rebellion. Moreover, the slain god's flesh and blood, called the "spirit,"were mixed with clay and used for the creation of men and women,52 who speedily became too numerous, once procreation and childbirth were established among them. The humans' noise annoyed Enlil. As I mentioned above, Enlil tried to destroy mankind on three occasions: in the first two instances it clearly happened at the end of each of the first two periods of 1200
89. S. Dalley regardsthe repetition a rhetorical, arithmetical, as not device andassumesperiods of only 600 yearsbetweenEnlil's destructions mankind. of 51Thismotif appears events alreadyin the Sumerian mythof EnkiandNinmah,thatnarrates afterthe separation heavenandearth-how the goddessesgot married gave birthto the of and younger generationof gods. These younger gods have to provide labor and, among other things,dig canals.They grumbleabouttheirlife, untilEnlil is raisedfromhis sleep andwith the for help of the othergods createsmen fromclay to be servants the gods. The Classicist,always mindfulof the Odyssey'sDemodokos,readsthe continuation the storywith particular of interest. There follows a feast at which Ninmahand Enki engage in heavy beer drinkingand the goddess challengesEnki;she fashionsa seriesof humanbeings, all with physicaldeformities, andfor each of themEnkifinds a usefulfunctionin society.His secondchallengeis to discover a functionfor "a man who could see thoughblind"("'blind'is a reasonablesurmise," Kramer in his footnote32). He "gavehim the artof song, namedhim chief [musician]of the usumgaland lyre before the king."For the story see S. N. Kramer J. Maier,Mythof Enki,The Crafty God (New York and Oxford 1989) 13f., 31-37, esp. 33f. (cf. S. N. Kramer,SumerianMythology [Westport2 1972], 68-72). 52All this is very similarto Marduk'screationof men in EnumaElish. Also see Berossos, Berossus [above,n. 49] I 2.3a/b p. 15). BabylonikaI FGrH II, 680 F 1.(7): Burstein,

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years, and we may presume that the third and most disastrous destruction took place also at the end of a 1200-year period. Enlil first tried plague, then drought and famine, and finally flood.53 During his third attempt, decline was precipitous, as people became smaller and lived shorter lives, a feature recurring in later Zoroastrian apocalypticism and implied in Hesiod's Five Ages. Men's shoulders and legs shortened, and in a section extant in the Assyrian recension, mothers did not open their doors to their daughters, a feature already noted in Akkadian prophecies. Daughters did not open their doors to their mothers.54Mothers and daughtersseem also to have watched each other being sold into slavery,55 a motif we have already found in late Zoroastrian apocalyptic narrations.Even worse is the cannibalism. Parents ate their daughtersand sons, and house devoured house. After the most serious attempt at destruction, that through flood, child-snatching demons and chastity for female priesthoods were devices invented to preserve the present order of the world and to prevent subsequent over-population. As it turns out in this story, Enlil's efforts to destroy mankind were futile. The Egyptian Rhe also abandonedhis attempts at destruction, once he diminished the population. Zeus likewise invented the wars at Thebes and Troy to decrease population.56 But Hesiod's Zeus is always victorious, and, as a result, these two wars brought the heroic age to its final end. Yet, Zeus and the gods created a new age of mankind, the age of present-day people. And in the Catalogue of Women which I already mentioned and to which I soon shall return,Zeus' plan failed just as Enlil's and Rhe's original plans failed or were aborted. (c) Conclusions We cannot pursue here the survival of the concept of periodic destruction into Hellenistic and late antiquity, or into even later times. It is ratherthe time

53Forthe flood, see also tabletXI of the Epic of Gilgameshand Berossos, BabylonikaII, FGrH 680 F 3.(10), (13) and F 4 (Burstein,The Babylonica [above, n. 49], II 1.11 and 2 pp. 19-21). 54ThusBottero-Kramer (above, n. 47) rev. v 18f. (p. 557) and vi 7f. (558); accordingto Lambert-Millard 113; see also theircomm.ad loc. [p. 166]) andFoster(I p. 192) "daughter (p. saw mothergo in. But motherwouldnot open herdoor [to daughter]." 55ThusFoster (above, n. 43) p. 192, andLambert-Millard (above, n. 47) p. 113; rev. v 19f. and vi 6f. criticismof the X6xacgcxoT 56Forthis motif see the beginningof the Kypria;cf. Aristarchos' of the neoteroi(to II. 1.5-6; see H. Erbse'snote [ScholiaGraecain Horn.IliademI]); Burkert, The Orient. Revolution (above, n. 48) 100-04; W. Kullmann,"Oral Poetry Theory and GRBS25 (1984) 307-23, esp. 322. For the supplementary Neoanalysisin HomericResearch," idea thatZeusrelocatesthe entireraceof heroeson the Islandsof the Blest, see above,n. 12.

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to evaluate what we saw on our journey through the Egyptian and NearEastern texts. The most striking similarity binding the Hesiodic with the Egyptian and Near Eastern stories involves the language and imagery used to describe societal evils and the dissolution of the family. But do the literary descriptions of evils develop independently of one another, or did one tradition influence the other? Wars, social and political upheaval, dissolution of family, loss of comradeship-these and other experiences of extreme hardship could produce the similarities in the descriptions. Words and phrases do not bring on their own sufficient proof of interculturalborrowing. More persuasive arguments seem to derive from the fact that the similarity of language and imagery for evils is found embedded in kindred narrative structuresthat are appearing in the geographical area in which these cultures are known to have been in contact.57 It is the common feature of the various stories which we surveyed that they provide an explanation of the present world and, in doing so, either describe or assume a past that begins with an aboriginal, beatific age; they then proceed to the evils of present-day life. This description of present-day life is frequently presented in the form of prophecies of evils that are still to come. Moreover, these prophecies of the destruction of the world and its order lead up to the prediction of the final restoration of the country to its former glory and happiness. In Babylon as well as in Egypt this type of narrativeintertwines with the concept of a powerful savior king who comes to restore the world. No single, extant narrative inspired Hesiod. It is rather within this broad cultural matrix that Hesiod's narrativewas engendered and came into being. Hesiod re57Beliefin an ideal age thatprecedesthe present-dayworldis almostuniversal.It is attested for Sumer.The story aboutthe exploits of Enmerkar refersto a time when therewere neither snakesnorotherdangerous animals,andpeople lived withoutfear,in plentyand security,and Sumerian they praisedEnlil with one tongue (Kramer, Mythology[above, n. 51], frontispiece and p. 107, n. 2). "Enkiand Ninhursag: Sumerian A ParadiseMyth"begins in all likelihood before the creationof mankindin the paradisiacland and city of Dilmun. Neither lions nor wolves kill, while wild dogs andpigs do not yet exist, etc.; peoplebecomeneithersick norold; waterfor washingoff pollutiondoes not yet exist. It seems unneeded.Thereis no mourning. When water is created, however, the process involves Enki's excesssive sexual activity. the Annoyedby his infidelity,Ninhursag, mothergoddess, createseight plantsfrom his overabundant semen;Enkieats the plants,gets sick, yet is savedwhen Ninursaggives birthto eight deities who heal his eight ailingorgans.One of them,Ensag,becomesLordof Dilmun,andwe the of may surmisethatthis marked beginning the morenormallivingconditionsin whichmankind finds itself (Kramerand Maier,Mythof Enki[above, n. 51] 12f. and 22-30, based on a new edition; cf. Kirk, Myth [above, n. 25] 91-99). Some elements of this myth recall the Egyptianstoryaboutthe "Cowof Heaven"(above,Sect. II 2 [a] andnn. 39 and40). As Christine Goldberghas pointedout to me, tales abouta seriesof creationsand,in particular,the conceptof four ages occuroutsidethe Mesopotamian Mediterranean and cultural comA plex. See, for example, S. Thompson,Motif-Indexof Folk-Literature, 630 ("Seriesof crecalamitiesandrenewals"). This aspectneedsfurther ations")and 1101 ("World study.

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formulated the materials he encountered for the purposes of his own story. In Hesiod's world there was no place for a good king to come and restorejustice. As I argued at the outset, Hesiod's tentative hope for the amelioration of the human condition lay only in mankind's return to a morality grounded in justice and we may add, in light of the rest of the Erga, to the farmer's life of honest work. Hesiod also grafted an heroic age onto a pre-existing narrative structure that catalogued the ages of mankind. This insertion was, as I have argued, the linchpin of Hesiod's own narrative, since it introduced the possibility of improvement and in this manner preparedthe way for the image of the just city, establishing a dramatic paradigm for avoiding human catastrophe. In the great kingdoms at the eastern end of the Mediterranean,it was the duty of the good king to maintain justice, and the king's justice was precisely the phenomenon which ushered in better times, in Babylon as well as in Egypt. The "kings" of Hesiod's Greece could not play the social and religious role of oriental monarch. Instead, Hesiod offers the diptych of doing justice and avoiding injustice (hybris), not only as solution to his own situation, but also as paradigm for all human intercourse. Behind the addresses to his brother and the kings lurks his real audience: his own society, and, we dare say, the people of future times. There is to be no new creation of mankind in Hesiod's Greek reconstruction and no mediating salvation from outside the social order; rather, human beings must improve out of a sense of responsibility for themselves and for their entire community. And so Hesiod changes the inheritedstructureto suit his own socio-historical context. We have distinguished two layers-Hesiod's story and an older amalgam of tales. They combine the narrationof past history, depicted as a mythic series of successive cycles, with prophecies that reflect the ideologies of Egyptian and Near Eastern kingship and that culminate in the salvation of mankind through the just king. Sandwiched between is another layer. I have already argued that the heroic age, lacking any metallic identifier, was added by Hesiod to the preexisting cycle of the ages-gold, silver, bronze, and iron. The need for such tamperingindicates that the series of the metallic ages is itself pre-Hesiodic. In the early Near Eastern cultures, however, we have found no trace of four ages named after metals.58 It is therefore likely that the idea of naming cycles of time after metals was a Greek innovation, and one that, although it preceded Hesiod, necessarily occurred after iron had become less expensive, less valued

of 58Inorderto provethe high antiquity the associationbetweenages andmetalsin the Near East, Gatz relies on the connections made between metals, colors, and planets (Weltalter buildson manyassumptions. [above,n.16], 12f.). This argument

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than the other metals.59For if Hesiod himself had introducedthe metals, he had no motive for denying a metallic identifier to his fourth race of heroes. In sum, the pre-Hesiodic story of the ages alreadypartakesof at least two distinct developments-the perception of past history as a series of closed cycles of subsequent ages of mankind and the supplying of these ages with metallic identifiers. The multi-layered prehistoryof Hesiod's Five Ages indicates that the motifs of this story, as well as the story itself, enjoyed a long life in Greece prior to Hesiod's day. The cycle of ages probably belonged to popular culture, and Hesiod may not have been aware of the story's circulation in the Near East, nor, as is likely, of its Near Easter origins. This leads to the supposition that this adoption of narrative technique and motifs from Egyptian and Near Eastern stories stretches, perhaps, as far back as the second millennium BCthat is, to "Mycenaean"times, when Syria, together with Ugarit, served as the bridge linking Greece to Egypt and Babylon.60 At this time the eastern

59Useof ironandtradein ironbeginsin Greeceas earlyas the Late BronzeAge, butnaming the present-dayage afteriron must have been occurredconsiderablylater.It seems scarcely possiblebeforethe 9th or even 8thcenturyBC. Forironin earlyGreecesee S. P. Morris'summaryin Daidalos and the Originsof GreekArt (Princeton1992) 117-19 andcf. her index s.v. iron. Hesiod's descriptionof the use of bronze,not only for tools and weaponsbut for entire houses (150f.), when combined with the fact that he places his age of heroes between his bronzeandhis iron age, indicatesthathe was thinkingof his mythicalbronzeage as long past (also see E. Vermeule,Greece in the BronzeAge [Chicagoand London 1964], 307); Hesiod marvelsat it: 151 p?!Xac OaK'CKc ci6rlpoc. 5' 60See, for example, Nilsson's Gesch. d. griech. Religion (above, n. 26) and The MinoanMycenaeanReligion and its Survivalin GreekReligion (Lund21950); B. C. Dietrich,"Evidence of MinoanReligiousTraditions theirSurvivalin the MycenaeanandGreekWorld," and Historia 31 (1982) 1-12; idem, The Originsof GreekReligion (Berlin and New York 1974) and Traditionin GreekReligion(BerlinandNew York 1986);M. C. Astour,Hellenosemitica "Das Zeitalter"(above, n. 12) (Leiden 1965); Morris,Daidalos (above, n. 59); Matthiessen, 187f.; also see the first chapterof Burkert'sGreekReligion, translated J. Raffan(Harvard by 1985; German,1977). The investigationof Mycenaeaninfluenceon Greekreligion and early Greek thought needs to be kept separatefrom questions that ask whether Homer reflects or for Mycenaeanhistoricalandsocial institutions, those of the 8th andearly7th centuries: the 8th andearly7th cent., see H. van Wees, StatusWarriors. War,Violenceand Societyin Homer and History,Dutch Monographs AncientHistoryandArchaeologyIX (Amsterdam on 1992); for the 8th cent., see IanMorris,"TheUse andAbuseof Homer,"CA5 (1986) 81-138, buthis sufferfrom his assumption Homerhas beenprovedto be a poet who composed that arguments orallyduringthe secondhalfof the 8th cent.BC. My argumentfor datingOrientalinfluenceson the myth of Hesiod's Ages as early as the Minoanand Mycenaeanperiodsdoes not doubtthat such influencescontinuedover centuries andthattheyreacheda new peakof intensity evolveda distinctive and in character theorientalizing period of 750-650 BC. Burkert,The Orient. Revolution(above, n. 48) ascribes the influenceof the Atrahasis elements(Early storyto this laterperiod.West speaksof "neo-oriental"

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Mediterraneanbasin was a multicultural world in which Greek speakers took an active part. Traces of Minoan wall painting have recently been found in Auaris in the eastern Delta of the Nile, dating to the time of the Hyksos about 1600 BC, and they seem to testify to the existence of a Minoan palace and settlement in the middle of the Egyptian city.61 In sum, trade and cultural exchanges took place over long periods of time, and eventually what was borrowed from others was acculturated into Greek tradition, centuries before Hesiod. As noted, Egyptian and Near Eastern concepts of mankind's renewal were closely connected with kingship. Greece would have been receptive to such stories principally in the days when kings still inhabited the great palaces. Yet as memories of powerful kings faded among the Greeks, renewal, as a concept, severed its traditionalconnection with kingship. The development is analogous to the later transformationof Egyptian kingship prophecies into apocalyptic ones (above, nn. 34 and 40). III. The Destruction of the Heroes in the Catalogue of Women A brief look at the last book of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women furthertestifies to the abundance and longevity of pre-Greek traditions within the Greek world, as well as to the creativity of the changes that emerged in the process of adaptation. If this poem was not written by Hesiod, or by a contemporary of Hesiod (as I am inclined to think), then it was written, at the latest, in the early 6th century.62 The text of the last book is known only from a fragmentary
of GreekPhilosophyand the Orient[Oxford1971] 205). AlreadyHeubeckdatedthe adaptation orientalmythsandideas to the firsthalfof the 8thcentury(above,n. 2). 61InM. Bietak's Austrianexcavationsat Tell el-Dab'a:EgyptianArchaeology,Bull. of the Egypt Explor.Soc., 2 (1992) 26-28; Archaeology46 (1993) 20. 62For a date between 580 and 520 see M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford1985) 130-37; also J. Schwartz,Pseudo-Hesiodeia(Leiden 1960), esp. 487-500 and 628f. None of the reasons for a late date is convincing by itself, and thus the conclusion remains uncertain.R. Janko(Homer,Hesiod and the Hymns.DiachronicDevelopmentin Epic Diction [Cambridge 1982]) has arguedfor a dateduringHesiod's own lifetime, approximately 690 BC (p. 200). His statisticaldataindicatea date slightlyearlierthanthatfor the Theogony, but, as he points out, "linguistictools are inevitably somewhatblunt"(p. 86). He does not expect accuracywithin a decade (p. 198). In the absenceof firm linkage betweenthe relative andthe absolutechronologicaldataandin light of the speculativenatureof datingourprimary is pointof reference,theIliad, to about730 BC, this level of accuracy too optimistic.Chronology aside, Janko'sstatisticallinguisticdata(esp. pp. 221-25) do not precludeHesiod's authorclosenessof the languageof the Catalogueto shipfor the Catalogue,andthey show a particular the languageof the end of the Theogony. that it of In the following interpretation the end of the Catalogueof Women, will be apparent lived in a single, in contrastto the miserablelife of the present-day,all previoushumankind to happyage thatcorresponded theErga's golden,silver,andheroicages all combinedtogether. They dwelt in close communionwith the gods (cf. fr. 1). The idealized creatures,the heroes and demigods, are sent to an afterlifein the Islandsof the Blest (cf. M. L. West, "Hesiodea,"

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

27

Berlin papyrus that leaves many details uncertain. It is reasonably clear, however, that the poet is narratingthe end of the heroic age, when, according to the plan of Zeus, the heroes dying in the Trojan war were to be transplantedto a place far separatefrom where mankind lives. This poet does not mention the name of Hesiod's Islands of the Blest, but he clearly alludes to it (below, with nn. 62 and 67 and my apparatusad 103). Many lesser mortals were to die as well-and, we may presume, they were to be sent to Hades. There were others who, after much suffering, were to be saved, when the world was renewing itself. This renewal of the world did not return it to its previous state, when gods and mortals lived happily together, but instead ushered in the present-day world in which we live. With Helen's wedding, the story has approached the time of the Trojan war, which, together with the war at Thebes, explained for Hesiod why the age of heroes perished (above, with n. 12). In the Kypria of the Homeric Cycle, Zeus used these two wars as the means to reduce surplus population on earth and to punish human beings for their impiety (sect. II 2 [b], with n. 56). Attribution of the first of these motives to a god is less appropriate for the rathersparsely settled lands of the Greeks and far more at home in the densely populated areas of Mesopotamia and Egypt. While the authorof the Catalogue tells his audience that "the minds of the gods were divided in strife" (95f.), as, in a more general way were the gods of the Iliad, that motif occurs in precisely the same context in the AkkadianSong of Atrahasis (above, sect. II 2 [b]). The Catalogue continues in a badly damagedpassage (fr. 204. 96-103):63
CQ n.s. 11 [1961] 130-36, esp. 133), while the rest of humankind renewsitself on earth.This is a tradition its own right(cf. n. 25). But this tradition not necessarilyolderthanthe strucin is ZPE 3 [1968] 126-33). To the turingimposed upon the ages in the Erga (cf. R. Merkelbach, the in contrary, storyin lines 99-105 is narrated a very allusive manner(arguedmore fully in what follows below), and the Catalogue'sversionis only understandable light of Hesiod's in story aboutthe removalof the heroes to the Islandsof the Blest (the island is not even mentionedin the Catalogue).I do not thinkthis merelya faultyimpression engendered the fragby of mentarycharacter these lines. Hence, the fact thatCat. fr. 204.103 is almostidenticalwith and Erga 167 (see West's commentary my apparatus below) functionsas a referencefromthe The Cataloguemusttherefore Catalogueto the Erga, andnot the otherway around. have been written aftertheErga,or at leastit reached mature its formaftertheErga,despitethefactthatthe Cataloguecontinuesthe Theogony.This chronology,however,does not necessarilyimply that the contentof the Catalogue'sstoryis post-Hesiodic,as is sometimesassumed.I hope thatall this will emergefrommy interpretative at presentation. Important the outsetremainsmy strong belief thatfr. 204 is not a lateraddition the Catalogue.To the contrary, removalof heroes to the fromearthto the Islandsof the Blest is the appropriate endingfor the Catalogueandin accordance with fr. 1. 631am following the text of R. Merkelbach M. L. West, with minorchanges(31990;ed. and maior 1967);as yet, I have not seen eithertheoriginalor a photograph.

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6i yap x6OT? ETiseco

OEccKXa ipya

96

KXaT' Ze?)c b'vitpex&rJc (V?iKOC) &daeipova yatav Tvppad[ac,iinrl 6 yevocCxepoIOnV d&vopJnwov noXkov atc;rckat CCEi6E, xpp6cpactv 6XC&Oat Nev 0e6)v xrKVea !t[
VvXac iLt0eo)[v, gi ]oicit pporoict . .] [ .. [6(P]6aX4oictv bp65vxa, XX' o'i 4[?]v gaK[ax]p?C K[ . ] OC rT iadpoc icep Xcoctv. 100

Xopic &ac'&v[O]p(6cnov T]i0e' [pioTov Ia]ci

103

97 (v?Kcoc) or perhaps(gfiviv) Koenen e.g., with the latter referor ring to the beginningof the Iliad; C6XkeLovyeve&cconsideredby
Merkelbach-West, cf. Cypria 5 ptniccac KnoklXtoV xeydklrv eptv 97f. 'IktaKcoo : g?teat n (probably a gloss for ruppdciac)

98 xTppdtiac, see Janko,Homer ECitat--- vpaciac Rzach lOOf.Ii 6 (above, n. 62) 224 bgo Ovrl]oict ppoCoict I 'rXKva 09e;v 0?sev gt[v60]rn[t West : gl %ii;tXOovi]oict poroict I TxKva( 101 (pq]oc West, cf. gt[X90i]t (jt[y?rl]t Rzach) Wilamowitz 'ibovxo(pdoc--- 'Hoic, and the formula Theog. 451 60(pOakroictv (pqoc ileXiolo, also Cat. 58.12 and II. 5.120: opa (and pa&v) were inherently Wilamowitz;but if his reconstruction valid, I 6opov would ratherexpect r&c,or genericxobc (see below, on Genesis 6) 102 I expect somethinglike K[ai icaptep]ot (cf. II. 5.806), or iK[a c& icTepo]v bO6t(ppov]ec, although n is said to have ]v : K[ai Rzach, but this is too long for the lacuna according to Westthe Merkelbach; scribemay have omittedec or writtenK[acfor K[dc) 103 cf. Erga 167 roic 6 5i x' &v0pdcwxvJioxoov ie' otcacccc. Kaci "For at that time high-thunderingZeus planned grandiosethings, stirringup <quarrel> throughoutboundless earth. Already he was all eagerto makeawaywiththe copiousraceof mortals, the while pretendingto destroythe lives of the demigods,lest the childrenof the gods, seeing the earthlypeople (?)] with theireyes, [would mix (?)] with them, but the blest [and...], as formerly,would have their life and seatsapartfrommen." An essential detail of the translation, as I have given it here, depends upon a conjecture by Wilamowitz, and this conjecture has become the basis for the canonical interpretation of these lines (see apparatus ad lOOf.).64 This interpretation holds that Zeus is planning to destroy mankind in order to prevent "Das Zeitalter" 64Forthe following see Matthiessen, (above, n. 12), esp. 182-87; G. W. E. and Nickelsburg,"Apocalyptic Mythin I Enoch6-11," JBL96 (1977) 383-405, esp. 395-97; P. D. Hanson,"Rebellionin Heaven,Azazel, andEuhemeristic Heroesin I Enoch6-11," JBL 96 (1977) 195-233, esp. 197-218.

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

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"the children of the gods" (that is, the younger generation of gods) from living together with mankind and, upon seeing mortal women (?), falling in love with them and fathering the demigods. These gods must return to life apart from men, living by themselves, as they did before mankind was created (o.c to Itep, 104). The Trojan war brought about by Zeus destroys humankind mirpoc and brings an end to the period which began with the happy intermingling of gods and mortals (fr. 1). In this interpretation, ring composition thus brings an appropriate and satisfying conclusion to the poem. Similar stories are known. In the book of Genesis (6) the "children of god" saw that the daughters of men were beautiful(!). They married them and fathered children upon them, the "giants." God saw this as mankind's act of defection, and hence he planned near complete destruction for the human race as well as for all animals through the flood.65 There can be no question but that some of these ideas, essentially the quarrel between the generations of gods and the destruction of men, are already present in the AkkadianSong of Atrahasis, as we saw above. There are, however, substantial difficulties with this restoration and interpretationof the fragment, as M. L. West has seen.66 The separation of the "children of the gods" from mankind has been described with nearly the same words the Erga used for describing the resettlementof the heroes in the Islands of the Blest. Other words confirm that the references in the Catalogue to this context in the Erga are deliberate.67Hence, the "sons of the gods"-the very ones whom in the Catalogue Zeus plans to remove from this world-are, in point of fact, the heroes who correspond to the fourth generation of the Erga.68 Further,if this is correct, then the Zeus of the Catalogue is not taking
65A muchexpandedstoryis extantin 1 Hen. 6-10 (transl.by E. Isaacin The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,ed. by J. H. Charlesworth [New York 19831,I 15-19); M. Black, The Book VII of Enoch,Studiain veteristestamenti pseudepigrapha (Leiden1985). 66Forwhatfollows, see the textof Cat.96-103 andmy criticalapparatus. 67Clei0cot: Erga 160 and Cat. 204.100-The gdaiapec in Cat. 204.102 correspondto the 0XPItot iipoec, living Ev IaKcapov vlcotct, of Erga 171f.; see also Erga 141 itox06vto t for OVrlToi the people of the silver age afterthey have been removedto beneaththe daicapec surfaceof the earth(above, sect. I with n. 8)-Cat. 204.122 o'i z[?v] fulfills the same function as Erga 166 TOtc teVv.Also see n. 62. 68Inadditionone wonderswhy the poet of the Catalogue would introducethe term r?Kva 0e)ov, meaning 'gods,' into a poem aboutthe unions of gods with humanwomen when the termbecomes ambiguousin such a context.On the otherhand, 104 KcTob ndpocK?p may be easierunderstood the phrasecomparesthe pendingseparation the gods (not heroes)from if of mankindwith the time beforethe existenceof mankind(thusin the precedinginterpretation). Never beforehave the heroesbeen separated fromthe restof mankind. this is no realdiffiBut culty. oc xOb t6poc cep can be closely connected with the preceding .dK[a]p?c and the word(s)thatfollow in the lacuna,insteadof relatingit to the separation from mankindas de-

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aim at the sexual activities of the lesser and younger gods, but he wishes instead to prevent the heroes from diminishing in their numbers and in their status. Many of them were, after all, his very own offspring. Taking up M. L. West's restorations in line lOOf.,we may now adjust our translationas follows (see n. 63): he "Already (Zeus)waseagerto makeawaywiththecopiousraceof to the lest all mortals, thewhilepretending destroy demigods, they,the seeing[thelight(?)] withtheireyes (i.e. beingalive), gods'children, with but waste(?) [away together] theearthly people, blest[andstrong from (?)] as formerly, wouldhavetheirlife andtheirseatsapart they men." Without Zeus' provident concern, the heroes would die together with ordinary mortals and go as shadows to the darkness of Hades. In their new abode in the Hesiodic Islands of the Blest, however, the heroes will continue to live in bright light.69 The happy days of the prologue, when mortals and gods shared common meals and common festivities, had long ago disappeared.To be sure, gods still appear on earth and father children upon women they desired, as the stories of the Catalogue tell us, but the lives of the heroes were no longer blissful. Zeus' plan now restores their former good life, although the setting is no longer an earthly one. This passage has become comprehensible through the awareness of the Catalogue's allusion to Hesiod's Erga and the implied contrastsbetween the fate of the heroes and those of ordinarymen. As it now turns out, the story in the Catalogue does not adopt a motif in which the reigning god fears that revolution would develop from sexual liaisons between the younger gods and mortal women. At least, it does not do so explicitly. Nevertheless, Zeus will separate the heroes apart from mankind and he brings to an end the age of social and sexual intercoursebetween gods and mortal women.
or scribedin the followingline:for example,"blest[andwith unitedminds]as formerly," "blest ad (see my tentativesuggestionsin the apparatus 102). Zeus plansto [andstrong]as formerly" and restorethe happylife thatthe heroeshave long startedto lose over many generations will for totallylose duringthe cosmic preparations the Trojanwar andthroughdying in the waritconditionsthey hadenjoyedin self. West, TheHes. Catalogue, 119 speaksaboutthe "paradise to that the beginning," is at the time of the prologue.Upon being transferred a place wherethey to enjoya happyafterlife,the heroeswouldbe restored theirformervitality. 69Inepic diction,(p6ocrefersto the light of the sun which defines life on earth(see West's to supplement line 101, n. 63). Here,(paocindicatesthatthe childrenof the gods are alive and has however,thatthe expected9le_Xioto been omitted-perhaps living on earth.It is significant, because the heroes are not to be diminishedin theirability to see the light, but they will be seeing the brightlighton the Islandsof the Blest, not the lightof the sunon earth.

Cyclic Destructionin Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

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In the Akkadian Song ofAtrahasis, Enlil wants to destroy mankind against the will of Enki and the other gods. Without men, the gods would have no food. In the Catalogue, Zeus plans the destructionof mankind but does not wish to inform the other gods about this element of his plan. Even Apollo, the god of prophecy, is deceived by Zeus (204.120). Motifs present in the oriental stories are implied-at least in part. If we ignore the allusions that link the separation of the children of the gods in the Catalogue with the age of the heroes in the Erga, then the Jewish story and its likely Babylonian prototype of the gods mixing with human women is clearly present. But if we instead link the story in the Catalogue to Hesiod's age of heroes, we find that the poet is reinterpretinghis source and is modulating the story to his own purposes. It is not his intention to explain why gods no longer live on earth, but why the heroes have been removed from earth and why they now dwell in a place separated off from mankind-the Islands of the Blest. This is the heart of the central theme in Hesiod's Five Ages that specify the different Greek modes for the afterlife (see sect. I). In sum, it is quite conceivable that the stories in Genesis and the Catalogue both derive independently from the same Babylonian background. The poet of the Catalogue, however, combined such stories with Greek beliefs in heroes and with a concept of the Islands of the Blest, as these were described in Hesiod's Erga.70The result was a new story. The Zeus of the Catalogue is not more successful than Enlil in the Song of Atrahasis. The Catalogue observes that mankindwas nearly destroyed by natural catastrophes and war. "Zeus heaped pain upon pain" is the prelude to the destruction: E]pack'aXyoc ?t' a7Xyc I Z?DC,105f. Line 106 ends with 'KepcE?, "he ravaged." There follows a reference to men embarking on ships (109f.), a clear sign of evil times. Those who inhabit Hesiod's just city do not sail upon the sea in ships (Erga 236).71 The Catalogue continues: trees shed their leaves cKacX (7coXXa 6' &XotyXoO er p&)ov6?v8p?o v agRovtca Xaiacg I Zce6oto
70Forthe afterlifeof the heroeson the Islandsof the Blest, see n. 12. In the Homerictradition the heroes go to Hades,with the exceptionof Menelaos.Even if the transportation the of heroesto the Islandsof the Blest proves to be essentiallya Greekidea, this does not preclude thatit was coalescing with pre-Greekimages and beliefs. Nilsson thoughtthatthe conceptof the happy afterlife was pre-Greek,that is, Minoan,and that it was influenced by Egyptian religion (Gesch. d. griech. Religion [above, n. 26]); see also B. C. Dietrich,Death, Fate and the Gods (London1965) 345-47 app.V, andcf. 352-57 app.VII on the Five Ages; idem,The Origins(above, n. 60) 58 n. 273. to of 71According Erga 164, shipsbelong to the Trojanwar,andhence to the destruction the heroes. The inhabitants the unjustcity see theirships being destroyedby Zeus (247). This of negativeview of travelby sea was neverlost; see, for example,TibullusI 3.35-50.

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zireniXa,124f.) and dropped their fruit, when they had been hit by violent blows from the North wind, even as Zeus destined it (125f.). Centuries later in Hellenistic Egypt, the Oracle of the Potter manipulates the motif of falling leaves so that it becomes a sign that events have roundedthe turing point and that evil times are over: "when the falling of the leaves, of strangers, comes to Egypt."72 In the Catalogue the sea was swollen (?),73 and, hence, everything quivered. Zeus seems to have combined the force of both flood and the earthquake. "Men's strength was wearing out; the fruits of earth became scarce in springtime, when in the mountains, in the hole of earth, the hairless one (the snake) gives birth to three children in the third year" (128-30).74 These images turn out, as the poem advances, to be a sign that transitiontoward a better time is commencing. The language fittingly becomes oracular, as is likewise indicated by a shift from narrationin past tense to the timelessness of the present tense. In the first year, the "hairlessone" avoids the paths of men. In the winter this being hides in its lair, the terrible snake (6Setvc Otcp, 136) with tawny back. Zeus throws his missiles at the snake and overcomes this evil-doer (itPptCTilv te Kai [ayptov, 137). But the snake retains its life, or, to be precise, its soul (WvXI),but not its strength. It is this soul (i 5') that sheds its "chamber,"that is, its old body, its skin in which it has lived hitherto (139f.).75 Throughout the second year the snake hides inside the earth. It is blind (142), as is said with allusion to the belief that snakes temporarilylose their vision in the darkness of their caves (Plin. Nat. 8.99). In the spring of the third year the snake reemerges, when something (perhapsthe warming sun) gives pleasure to men (145).76 The few words that survive on the papyrus continue this gentler tone, indicating that, first, the snake gives birth to its three young (147-50).
ldt tiXt tiGv cKaKnv, 72P230-32 and P3 53-54 (above, nn. 29 and 36) rxaia 68 '&eat A corruptpassage of the inav cpoXX6(pot)acapayevezat eic AiyurctovtEvWov avSpC6v. Oracleof the Potter seems to referto the acaciatreewhich shed his leaves in the badtimes and of Apocalypticism" growsthembackafterthe restoration good times;see Koenen,"Manichaean (above, n. 27) 325f. 73[oi06ljecev & OXkacca,127. For the supplementsee W. A. Beck, "HesiodFr. 204, 127 M.-W.," ZPE 38 (1980) 46. 74 128 86e api6c, TpUZciKgV 8i1?ivoc ptp6eov, ILVVOecice ev eaptvft, iJret' arptXocoiipcct ikcet piq 'O 130 [yjai[rl]c ev Kei)u0got xpiTot erei tpia feicva. 75 139 Vrxi xoi) [yJ' oYqKaTaXeictZ[xat 140 aot6 to.xovOadXag.[ov n 6' a &<p' West recognized the metaphorof sloughing;"Hesiodea"(above, n. 62) 134. The image is of naturalenough;it does not yet imply the latermetaphor the soul clothing herself with her fr. 126, andlater,very common). body (Empedokles 76Forthe survivingwordsandlettersof lines 144-80 see the editiomaior (above,n. 63).

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Then men seem to be healed from sickness (156 and 158)77 and, thus, life is renewed. Nothing survives in the extant text that defines the quality of the renewed cycle, but in light of the Erga we may easily surmise that it is our present-day life that emerged out of the catastrophe. What begins as the destruction of the heroic race in the Trojan war is transformedin the course of the narrativeinto an image of mankind's renewal. The world and the condition of human life deteriorate until they become unbearable, but then Zeus smites the snake, his enemy KcxC' c4oxIV. In this same Zeus conquered Typhon (or Typhoeus, as Hesiod calls him), the creature way with arms and legs, but a hundred serpent-heads. Marduk fought against the snake Tiamat, and the ritual was repeated each year in the festival of the Babylonian New Year in which the cycle of time was renewed.78In the Catalogue the significance of the snake-symbol changes, so that the dead snake modulates into a hibernating snake, as MartinWest has recognized. It restores and recreates itself so that it is fit to begin its life anew. The snake and its three young are transformedinto a symbol of time renewed.79And thus Zeus, who set out to destroy mankind, becomes the savior of mankind on earth, much like the Egyptian sun-god Rhe. Zeus rescues the heroes, too, conveying them after their death on the battlefields at Troy to the Islands of the Blest, as Hesiod had taught. The poet of the Catalogue would have narrated this episode of the heroes' resettlement near the end of his poem, where the end of the life of the heroes on earth brought his story line to its end and, at the same time, the happiness of the heroes' restorationbrought back the happy times with which the story began (fr. 1). First, however, he was to continue the story which had been interrupted by the symbol of the snake. The Trojan war was about to break out with all the destruction it brought, when Zeus in fulfillment of his plan "heapedpain upon pain" (Cat. 105f., see above). The poet of the Catalogue began with Hesiod's narrative,but combined it with other stories from Greek and Near Eastern milieux. He intertwined historical narrations of events from his people's past with prophetic imagery in order to explicate how and why this renewal of time's cycle once took place.
77Westrecognizedthe birthof the threeyoung."Healing" causedhim to thinkof the medical uses of snakes ("Hesiodea"135 and The Hes. Catalogue [above, n. 62] 120). In the present is an in context,however,"healing" perhaps essentialingredient therenewalof world. 78Fora brief surveyof the manifoldreligiousandotherideas connectedwith snakes,see R. in Merkelbach Reallexikon Antikeand Christentum, Drache. s.v. far 79InEgypt, snakedeities are in chargeof periodsof time, as well as the lifetime of mortals (H. Bonnet, Reallexikon der dgyptischenReligion (Berlin 1952) s.v. Schlange. Later, in gnostic speculation,the snakecircling and biting its own tail, the ouroboros,will become the symbolfor the worldandfor eternity.

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Hesiod of the Erga had already passed beyond a concept of cyclic renewal, but the poet of the Catalogue kept it alive and, on the literary level, expanded it into an importantdevice within his intellectual and narrative strategies.80As a concept within Greek speculative thought, cyclic renewal of the world and its inhabitants remained strong and ever amenable to manipulation, crossing back and forth among Greeks, Romans, and the Near East. Alas, many details of my story remain doubtful, for our texts are damaged and many works have disappeared.Nonetheless, I hope to have presented a persuasive description of the culturallayers out of which both Hesiod and the author of the Catalogue formulated their own concepts. They inherited a many-faceted legacy of cyclic time and an all-powerful kingship which had taken shape in Egyptian and Near Eastern milieux centuries earlier-even if our Greek authors failed to realize it. This is not to deny that more recent and more direct influences came into play just previous to Hesiod's own time (above, n. 60). But there were, I submit, earlier Minoan-Mycenaean cultural exchanges, even as there were most assuredly later Hellenistic ones. These movements never traveled simply from East to West, but concepts, once borrowed, moved with equal vigor from West to East during Mycenaean-Minoan times, as we saw attested in the Minoan wall-painting in Egypt, and later in Hellenistic times, as prophecies of world renewal transformedinto apocalypticism. They entered Zoroastrianismand, in the process, reemerged as an apocalypticism in which Egyptian, Babylonian, and Jewish traditions, currently in circulation at the time, happily intermingledto become constitutive elements in later, mainly Christian,apocalypticism which is still alive and well in our own day.

80This,of course,is not an argument againstHesiod's authorship.