When Zeus,half in sport and half in cruelty,made man,young Hermes, who as all Olympus knew,was forever at some mischief,insisted on meddling with his father's work. He got leave to fashion the human ear out of a shell that he chanced to have by him, across which he stretched a fine cobweb that he stole from Arachne.He hollowed and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would turn back all sounds except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on a brazen horn,whilst the impenetrable web would keep out all such whispers as Truth could send up from the depths of her well.Hermes chuckled as he rounded the curves of his human ear and fastened it on to the newly -made Human Creature.

" So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing that is not," he said to himself in glee-knowing that the box he would give to Pandora would not bear more confused and complex woes to the hapless earth than this gift of an ear to man.
But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears were wanted, he only made one.
Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder and resolved to avenge the theft of his milk-white herds which had led him such a weary chase through Tempe.
Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it. He strung across it a silver string from his own lyre and with it gave to man one ear by which the voice of truth should reach the brain.
"You have spoilt my sport," said the boy Hermes, angry and weeping.
"Nay," said the elder brother, with a smile. "Be comforted. the brazen trumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, but ten thousand mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice your ear instead of mine."