The Greek Myth of Pandora – First Mortal Woman

 

 

Pandora’s Box, one of the most loved Greek myths, is also one of the shortest, however, saying that, to fully understand this marvelous myth and how Pandora came to be the first mortal woman on earth, the bane of mankind, you need to know a little about Prometheus and so it gets longer!

 

Prometheus

 

Prometheus, one of the Titans (these gods came before the Olympians and lived on Mount Othrys, not Mount Olympus), was given the task, by Zeus (Roman-Jupiter) King of the Olympians, of creating mankind, shaping him from water and earth; his brother, Epimetheus, was given the task of creating animals.

 

 

 Epimetheus, God of Hindsight and lack of brain matter, as it turns out, was ordered to create the animals first and then, when that task was accomplished, Prometheus, God of Foresight, was to create mankind.

  What a lot of trouble and strife would have been avoided if it had been the other way around but that’s hindsight for you!

 

The creation of mankind

 

With much enthusiasm and not much thought, Epimetheus set about his task.

Once the animals were molded from water and earth, dipping into a bag of tricks, given to the brother’s by Zeus, Epimetheus bestowed on these lucky creatures all the best qualities; strength and speed for pursuing and killing prey, fur and feathers for protection, claws and teeth for self defense and finely-tuned senses.

 His job finished, Epimetheus sat back and proudly surveyed his work, he was about to tell Prometheus that he could now start on mankind when suddenly a thought occurred to him, he’d used up all the best qualities, mankind was going to be rather an inferior species!

 

Making the best of a bad job

 

 Tentatively, Epimetheus said to his brother “Er, Prom, I’ve finished my animals, you can get on with man now but before you do, I’d better tell you something” and went on to explain what he had done.

 Prometheus, used to Epimethus’ lack of foresight, just had to make the most of a bad job; to compensate for the lack of qualities left for him to work with; he made man stand upright, like the gods and then paid a visit to his pals on Mount Olympus to see what he could do to safeguard man’s survival.

 

 

Prometheus, Hephaestus and fire

 

 Hephaestus (Roman-Vulcan), God of Blacksmiths and craftsmen and Athena (Roman- Minerva), Goddess of wisdom, handicraft and war, risking the anger of their father, Zeus and feeling rather sorry for Prometheus, decided to help by giving him their knowledge, so Prometheus, in turn, could teach arts and crafts to mankind.

 Just as Prometheus was about to leave Mount Olympus, Hephaestus presented him with fire; “Here, take this, it may come in useful for mankind” and this, my friends, is where the trouble started.

 Prometheus returned to earth to teach man the art of survival; how to hunt for food, how to build houses and boats and how to read and write and, I’m sure he regretted this one; the ritual of sacrificing animals to the gods.

 

 

 As man made their sacrifices to the gods, Prometheus noticed that they seemed to get the short end of the stick,the gods inevitably chose the choice cuts of meat, leaving the bones and fat for man; to turn the tables, Prometheus thought he would show man a trick or two.

 

Prometheus tricks Zeus

 

 Prometheus cut an ox into two pieces, saying to man, “Watch closely, this is how you are to perform your next sacrifice, you’ll come off much better, trust me” and with that, he made a smaller parcel, using the best cuts, wrapping it in the ox’s stomach, and a larger parcel, consisting of the skin and bones, which he concealed in fat.

 Sure enough, at the next sacrifice, the greedy gods chose the larger parcel, unknowingly leaving the lean meat for man.

 On realizing what had happened, Zeus thought “I’ll teach those tricksters a lesson, let’s see how they like raw meat” and with that, snatched that wondrous thing called fire, from earth and from mankind.

Seeing what had happened, Prometheus felt bad, this was all his doing, he never should have taught man to trick the gods.

“I must make amends, they needed that fire, I must find a way to return it to them.” He thought.

 In the dead of night, whilst all the gods were snoring on Mount Olympus, Prometheus broke into Hephaestus’ workshop, stole the fire, hid it in a hollow fennel stalk and with it, hot-footed it back to earth.

 

 

Prometheus’s punishment from Zeus

 

The next morning, on discovering that, thanks to Prometheus, man, once again had possession of his treasured fire, Zeus’ anger knew no bounds and he ordered Hephaestus to capture the immortal Prometheus, chain him to a rock, where, an eagle would eat his liver, which would grow again during the night, only to be nibbled at by the eagle again, the next day.

 

 

Prometheus’ punishment was to continue for all eternity but ended when he was eventually freed, many years later, by Hercules.

 Prometheus had been punished by Zeus for his treachery with fire, what was to be the fate of mankind for accepting stolen goods?

 

 

Pandora – The first mortal woman

 

 This is where Pandora comes into the picture.

 To punish humanity, Zeus ordered Hephaestus and Athena to mold a woman from earth; the first mortal woman created by the gods, a woman who would wreak havoc on earth, the catastrophe of mankind, who, up until now had been living the life of gods, as immortals, innocents, knowing not of birth and death, evil and hardships.

 

 

 Many of the gods of Mount Olympus had a hand in creating the first mortal woman, as Hesiod (Greek poet between 750 and 650 BC), tells us, in his epic poem, “Works and Days”:

  “Athina taught her needle work and weaving and clothed her; Aphrodite “shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs” (Lines 65–6); Hermes gave her “a shameful mind and deceitful nature” ( Lines 67–8); Hermes also gave her the power of speech, putting in her “lies and crafty words”

 

 

 Pandora, without being named, was actually first mentioned in an earlier poem by Hesiod, “Theogony”:

 “From her is the race of women and female kind,
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,
no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.”

 Owing to the many gifts bestowed upon her, the first mortal woman was named Pandora, meaning “the all-endowed” or, “the all-gifted”.

 Once Pandora was ready, in her best silvery dress, hair adorned with flowers, looking as pretty as a picture, Zeus offered her as a bride to Epimetheus, remember him, the half-wit brother of Prometheus?

 

Pandora’s box

 

As Pandora’s dowry, Zeus presented her with a “Pithos”, a large earthenware jar with a wide mouth, used by the ancient Greeks for storing wine, olive oil, grains, or even burial of the dead and instructed her, that under no circumstances, was she ever to open the jar.

 

 

 It is more commonly thought that Pandora was given a box but this may be down to incorrect translation of the word “Pithos”, translated into Latin from Greek by the sixteenth century humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, as box instead of jar and once Dante Rossetti painted his famous picture of Pandora, the jar’s fate was sealed, it had become a box. (Kouti in Greek)

 

 

 Now, Prometheus had warned his brother, Epimetheus, never to accept any gift from Zeus but Epimetheus, the fool that he was, had forgotten this advice and on seeing Pandora’s beauty, without a second thought, took her as his bride.

 Epimetheus and Pandora lived quite happily together, the only blot on their relationship being Pandora’s nagging at Epimetheus to open the jar, after all, it was her dowry, how silly of Zeus to tell her not to open it.

 Epimetheus, surprisingly, took heed of Zeus, there was no way he was allowing Pandora to open that jar and so he hid the key to its large lock, which Zeus had given him when Pandora wasn’t looking.

 

Pandora opens the box

 

One night, Pandora, who wasn’t an evil woman, only curious and disobedient and also rather brave to consider defying Zeus, decided that when Epimetheus was asleep, she would break open the jar, which she did and the consequences of her reckless act were dire!

As soon as the jar was opened, out flew all manner of abominations: evilness, hate, crime, war, poverty, pain, disease, hunger, hatred but there, hanging on to the edge of the jar, remained hope (In Greek mythology, Elpis, the personification of hope).

 

 

Pandora flapped her arms about, trying to get these evil spirits back to where they had come from but to no avail, on seeing that all these goings on had awoken her husband, she quickly slammed the lid shut, trapping hope inside.

 “Oh you silly woman” exclaimed Epimetheus, “look what you’ve done, you’ve brought wretchedness upon the heads of humankind, at least open up the jar and free that last little creature, so at least we may have hope.”

 

 

The fifth age of man – The Iron Age:

Blame it on Pandora

 

 According to the poet Hesiod, in his poem “Works and Days”, the tale about the creation of man, was inspired upon meeting the nine muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory).

There are five ages of man; the first four, all relatively idyllic, until along came Pandora, who caused the beginning of the fifth age; the last age, the age we are in now; destined to be a never-ending age of trouble and strife.

 

 

The Golden Age:

 Men lived like gods, knowing no hardships, no pain; life was one long balmy summer

 The Silver Age:

Zeus has now created man inferior to god, the year now has four seasons, and man must grow his own food, but life is still idyllic.

 The Bronze Age:

Men are now war-like meat-eaters and carry spears, their weapons and houses are made of bronze, when they died they went to Hades (The underworld).

 The age of Heroes:

This is the Mycenaean age, an age of heroes, who, after death either went to the underworld, or to the land of the blessed.

 The Iron Age:

Men are now evil and are burdened with all the worries of the world; they must toil and suffer for the rest of their lives. Innocence has gone for good but we always have hope.

 

 

 And so, this myth goes a long way in showing how and why there is evil in the world, the similarity here, to the biblical story of Eve and that dratted apple, in Genesis, is quite interesting, a few differences but both give the same message, woman was the downfall of man!