ABSTRACT
According to Hesiod, after Prometheus stole fire from the gods and saved the struggling race of men, Zeus set about his revenge. He had Hephaistos fashion an "evil thing" to balance the good of fire- a woman in the "likeness of a bashful maiden". The craftiness of females is imagistically linked to weaving, the woman's identifying activity that symbolizes as well her ambiguity. In the view of Greek men, women can't control their emotions any more than they can their tongues, another sign of the weakness of their powers of reason. The ambiguity of female sexual beauty that Helen represents is apparent in her origins, like Aphrodite's a confusion of the divine and elemental, the cosmic order embodied in Zeus coupling with the chaos of the natural world. Heroic anger and female sexuality are both natural energies cultural order must try to control.
