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For all thy bitterness of soul thou shalt find consolation,

Thy dreams of beauty and of wealth thou shalt at last encompass[288].’

The Fates, it has been already said, are three in number; why so, it seems impossible to determine. It may be that the functions discharged by them fell readily into a three-fold division; thus in the district of Zagorion in Epirus, one Fate ‘spins the thread’ (κλώθει τὸ γνέμα) which determines the length of life, the second apportions good fortune, and the third bad[289]. Or again, the division may have been made in such a way that one Fate should preside over each of the three great events of human experience, birth, marriage, and death. The term ‘fate’ (μοῖρα)[290] is often used by women as a synonym for marriage (γάμος)—in curious contrast with the man’s more optimistic description of his wedding as χαρά, ‘joy’; and a Greek proverb, used of a very ignorant man, δὲν ξέρει τὰ τρία κακὰ τῆς Μοίρας του, ‘he does not know the three evils of his Fate,’ to wit birth, marriage, and death, carries the connexion of fate with these three events a little further. But such distributions of functions are probably posterior to the choice of the number. Three was always a sacred number, and the ancients delighted in trinities of goddesses[291].