upon a time the clever Prometheus (a god, not a man: but his actions involve men for ever) tricked Zeus
by cunning division of a slaughtered ox. In one pile he put the flesh, making it look meagre and
unattractive in the animal's paunch: in the other he put the bones, covering them with a toothsome layer of
fat. Zeus, remarking on the unequal division, seized the fat and bones; and that is why, ever since, bones
and fat are what the gods get, while men feast on the meat. The original sense of the ritual of sacrifice was
not of feeding the gods at all, but of offering them back the bones which are the basic structure of the
animal, probably as a magical device to ensure that they in turn would not withhold animals in future
from the hunters. Later, an explanation was felt to be necessary for a custom which gave the worshipper
all the good bits. The explanation is older than Hesiod, who says:
Zeus in eternal wisdom knew the trick, was not deceived,
But planned for men disasters which should never be relieved.
He seized the white fat with two hands: his wrath was very great
To see the white bones underneath, Prometheus' clever cheat.(Theog. 550-5)
We see the attempt, quite in Hesiod's manner, to preserve the omniscience of Zeus, although the story
clearly assumes that the god was really taken in.
Hesiod develops his story to deal with two other great features of the world: fire and women. In anger at
his deception Zeus deprived men of fire, but Prometheus brought it back in a hollow tube. Angered still
more, Zeus devised the first woman, the mother of the disastrous race of women, who live with men like
drones with bees, parasitic and profligate; yet necessary, if a man is not to be without children to care for
his old age. We see the contrast between this peasant misogyny and the tragic clear-sightedness of the
Iliad, when we compare Achilles' description to Priam of the two jars of good and evil from which Zeus
gives to mankind either a mixture of both or unmixed evil: 'So did the gods deal with my father Peleus ...
and you too, old man, we hear were happy once, before the Achaeans came ...' (Iliad 24. 534 ff.), with
Hesiod saying that if a man gets a good wife, then he has something to offset the bad; but with a bad one
life is unbearable (Theog. 607ff.).
The poem establishes Zeus as ruler, and runs out (the original end is lost) in a catalogue of the offspring
of divine and human amours. In the fifth century Herodotus could say of Hesiod and Homer (in that
order), 'They it was who composed the theogony for the Greeks, giving the gods their titles and assigning
them their honours and their occupations.' To some extent Hesiod was an authority for later Greeks in
such matters, but there was no question of universal acceptance. His count of nine Muses did not prevent
different people from talking of them as three, four, five, seven, or eight in number; the Hecate of Hesiod
is quite different from the goddess we find elsewhere.