Pandora and the Great Jar

Author: Hesiod

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

The Greek poet Hesiod tells the story of Pandora in two texts written circa 700 BCE: the Theogony, a poem about the origins of the gods, and Works and Days, a poem that addresses agricultural practice. In the Theogony, the titan Prometheus angers Zeus by stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. In retaliation, Zeus orders Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, to fashion a shy maiden out of earth. The goddess Athena clothes her with silver garments and a beautiful veil and adorns her hair with garlands. Athena also places on her head a golden crown wrought with fine detail by Hephaestus himself. When Zeus presents the woman to the other gods and men, they are astonished at the sight. Hesiod elaborates by describing the maiden as the origin of “the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth” (123). The poet likens this female scourge to mischievous drones who enjoy the fruit of the other bees’ labor, and he describes the misfortune of men whether they marry or not: those who do not marry have no one to help them in old age, while those who do marry risk the misfortune of difficult children who cause unceasing worry. Hesiod concludes this brief story by affirming that through this punishment, not even Prometheus could overcome the power of Zeus.

In Works and Days, Hesiod also begins the story with Prometheus’s theft of fire, but he elaborates on the tale by adding several plot details and embellished rhetoric. After Zeus discovers Prometheus’s crime, he proclaims that he will give to men “an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction” (7). Zeus orders Hephaestus to create a maiden out of earth and commands that the maiden resemble the goddesses in appearance. Athena instructs the maiden in needlework and weaving, Aphrodite endows her with beauty and a sense of longing, and Hermes is instructed “to put in her a shameless mind and a deceitful nature” (7). The gods follow the commands of Zeus, who names the maiden Pandora (meaning “all-endowed”) because she was given gifts from the gods of Olympus. Zeus then sends Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, who forgets Prometheus’s previous warning never to accept a gift from the gods. She brings with her a jar full of the gods’ gifts, which are in fact nothing but evil and suffering. When she removes the lid from the jar, she releases “ills and hard toil and heavy sicknesses” (9), which had previously been unknown to humans. Only hope remains behind in the jar; otherwise, the earth is plagued by evils of every sort. Hesiod concludes this version by affirming that Zeus’s will cannot be escaped.

SIGNIFICANCE

Both versions of this ancient Greek myth function as etiologies of evil and suffering in the world. Yet although each version places the blame squarely on women, as represented by Pandora, the stories emphasize different elements. In the Theogony, Hesiod does not mention Pandora by name but emphasizes that the woman created by Hephaestus is a punishment; by her very nature, she causes inevitable evil to men whether they marry or not. In this story, all women bring suffering to men, and Hesiod thus implies that women are the source of all suffering in the world. The better-known version of the myth, recounted in Works and Days, also describes the maiden as evil, but this story includes the important new detail of the jar containing the sufferings that Pandora releases when she removes the lid. In this version, Pandora is evil and her actions bring about suffering, but she is not exactly the embodiment of all evils.

Notwithstanding these differences, the image of woman suffers greatly in both versions, which portray her as unequivocally bad. In this sense, the story is analogous to other etiological myths, most notably the story of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). In this story, Adam and Eve are the first humans created by God, and they live in perfect innocence and harmony in the Garden of Eden until Eve violates God’s commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Deceived by a serpent, Eve eats the fruit and persuades Adam to do the same. God punishes the couple by banishing them from the garden and forcing them to live on earth, where they must suffer pain and hardship as a consequence of Eve’s sin. Here too, woman is portrayed as the cause of the world’s suffering.

Interestingly, however, Hesiod’s myth includes an important difference, which is that Zeus engineers the creation of Pandora as a punishment for Prometheus’s theft. This act implies that Zeus himself is responsible for the etiology of evil and suffering, given that he deliberately commands Hephaestus to create such a maiden. Moreover, the theft of fire indicates that some type of evil, or at least wrongdoing, existed prior to the advent of Pandora. As readers and scholars have noted, these and other ambiguous details pose intriguing interpretive puzzles regarding this myth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hesiod, et al. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1954. Print.

Lev Kenaan, Vered. Pandora’s Senses: The Feminine Character of the Ancient Text. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2008. Print.

Panofsky, Dora. Pandora’s Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. Print.

Phipps, W. E. “Eve and Pandora Contrasted.” Theology Today 45.1 (1988): 34–48. Print.

Zeitlin, Froma. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Print.