The tales of Greek Mythology are full of gods and goddesses mingling with mortals and interfering
with their lives, sometimes by introducing legendary objects that wield unimaginable power
From a Medusa head that turns you into stone to a Golden Apple that started a war,
the most famous object in all of the Greek mythology is a… simple box?
Why is this seemingly dull box so famous? To answer this and more,
we need to start with a woman named Pandora. You've probably heard at least a few references
to Pandora's Box in your lifetime, generally when referring to something that is better
off left alone. But there's more to the story than just a woman and a box.
Pandora as a mythic figure originated in the works of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod,
first in his poem Theogony, then in his later work on, Works and Days. Though Pandora was not
referenced by name in Theogony, there is a female figure depicted in the poem thought to be Pandora.
She was, according to this poem, created on the orders of Zeus as a punishment for humanity in
response to the actions of Prometheus. Before we can explore Pandora further,
we first have to understand what exactly Zeus was trying to punish humanity for. What exactly
did Prometheus do that upset the King of the Gods, the ruler of sky and thunder, so deeply?
Prometheus was the son of the Titan Iapetus and one of the Oceanid nymphs, either Clymene or Asia,
depending on the story. As you might imagine, things were a bit contentious between mortals and
immortals in the early days of humanity. One of the many sources of conflict between the two was
the possession of fire. Zeus withdrew the gift of fire from humans as a punishment after Prometheus
tricked him into accepting a sacrificial offering that looked appealing on the surface, but was,
in fact, just the bones of a bull. This was intended to allow the humans to keep the meat
for themselves, while only offering the part of the bull that was inedible to the gods. If you’re
familiar with how Zeus acted in Greek mythology, you can probably guess what happened next. Zeus
really didn't take kindly to being tricked, so as punishment he hid fire from humanity.
Well, Prometheus wasn't about to leave humans shivering in the dark with no way to cook their
food or heat themselves. Using a fennel stalk to hide the flame, he stole fire back from Zeus,
and returned it to the mortals. Zeus was furious and took out every ounce of his rage
on Prometheus. He sentenced the immortal god to a fate worse than death: he was bound with chains
across a rock, and every day an eagle, which also happened to be one of Zeus’ messengers,
would come and eat his liver. Every night, his liver would grow back, and the nightmarish cycle
would start again. Prometheus would eventually be freed from his torment by the Greek hero Heracles,
but we guess he probably had a bit rough time while he was chained to that rock.
So what does Pandora have to do with this lurid tale of fire, deceit, and liver-eating birds?
In her first appearance, in Theogony, she was created as a result of Zeus’ determination to
punish mankind by any means necessary. Note the choice of words there, mankind. We'll get back to
that. In an act of retribution, Zeus ordered Hephaestus, god of artisans and blacksmiths,
to use earth to craft the world's first human woman. She would be beautiful, but evil,
and her descendants would bring untold suffering on the human race. As Hesiod put it: "For 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 helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."
Oh boy, with that kind of attitude, we’re sure Hesiod was popular with the ladies back in Athens…
But Hesiod wasn't finished with his sexist takes on women yet,
nor was he content to only explore this (at the time) nameless woman in Theogony.
He brought her back in his poem Works and Days, where he expanded the myth of
the first woman into the version most often repeated today. In this telling,
she received a series of gifts from the gods, each contributing something to her final form.
Hephaestus molded her from the earth, Athena taught her weaving and needlework,
and Aphrodite "shed grade upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs," which
honestly sounds like the Goddess of Love gave her depression. Hermes gave her "a shameless mind and
a deceitful nature," as well as the power to speak. More specifically, he gave her the power
to lie and use "crafty words." Side note: Which ancient Greek girl do we think broke Hesiod's
heart? Because his storytelling seems somewhat one-sided in its interpretation of the sexes.
Anyway, Athena gave her clothing, Peitho, goddess of persuasion,
and the Graces draped her in necklaces and jewels, and the Horae, goddesses of the seasons,
placed a crown woven from plants upon her head. Talk about drip.
To top it all off, Hermes gave her a name: Pandora,
meaning "all gifts." As Hesiod wrote, "all they who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift,
a plague to men who eat bread." Good news for the gluten-free men out there.
So when does that box come in? Along with the creation of Pandora, Zeus bestowed upon her a
mysterious box, the contents of which were a secret to anyone but him. We should also
mention that Pandora wasn't just a gift to humanity, but also to Prometheus’ brother,
Epimetheus. Prometheus warned his brother not to take anything Zeus offered him, but being the
hard-headed brother he was, Epimetheus welcomed the beautiful Pandora as his wife and let her
bring the box along, too. Pretty soon after, she opened that box, and all manner of evil things
flooded out, filling the earth and sea. Only one entity was left inside: "Hope remained there in an
unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere
that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds."
Wait a minute, did that say jar? That's right. Pandora's Box was never a box in the first place.
The word for the vessel that Pandora was given was "pithos," which refers to a large clay jar used
primarily for storage. It often held wine, oil, or grain. It also could be used in burial practices,
and some were believed to contain souls. Historians believe the word must have been
mistranslated at some point as "box,” and that just kind of caught on. The
mistranslation is frequently attributed to Erasmus, the 16th-century humanist,
though other historians have pointed their fingers at the 16th-century Italian poet, Giglio Gregorio
Giraldi. Wherever the mistranslation started, the end result was the same. "Pithos" became
"pyxis," the word for "casket," which eventually became "box." To be fair,
we think “Pandora’s Box” does sound a lot more epic and mysterious compared to "Pandora's Jar."
This linguistic change may seem small, but some scholars believe that it takes away from the
larger meaning of the story. For example, Jane Ellen Harrison, a British scholar of classics,
believes that the shift from "jar" to "box" erased some of Pandora’s inherent connection to the
earth and the dirt. The jar would have been made from earth and clay, just like Pandora herself.
Though Hesiod's version was the first and the most well-known one, other versions of
the myth do exist. In some, Pandora desperately tried to stop the evils from escaping the jar,
slamming the lid shut- but much too late. By the time she got it closed, the only thing left inside
the jar was Hope, leaving the world full of evils and hopelessness. This is a bit different from
Hesiod's version of Pandora, who was deliberately deceitful and wicked. In these versions, Pandora
is innocent, deliberately tempted by Zeus and the other gods with the gift of a vessel she is warned
never to open. Her curiosity gets the better of her, and all of humanity suffers as a result.
In these versions, the moral of the story shifts from "you can't escape the wrath of the Gods,"
to "curiosity killed the cat," the killing being done by the wrath of the Gods of course.
There are other versions of the story as well, some that take the blame off
Pandora's shoulders entirely. Artists like Anton TIshbein and Sebastien Le Clerc painted
depictions of the myth in which Pandora's husband, Epimetheus, opened the jar.
Speaking of Epimetheus, he and Pandora had a daughter, one who also experienced the wrath of
Zeus first-hand. Pyrrha was married to Deucalion, the son of Prometheus. When Zeus decided to bring
the current age of man to an end, he created a massive storm to flood the entire world. Luckily,
Prometheus, Pyrrha's father-in-law and uncle, saw the flood coming. He
instructed Deucalian to build an ark where he and Pyrrha could wait out the storm.
Wow, that story sure sounds familiar. We’ll come back to that later!
Deucalion and Pyrrha managed to survive the flood, their ark landing on Mount Parnassus
after the waters receded. But they were the only two humans that managed to make it. Somehow,
some way, the two of them would need to repopulate the entire planet. So, they came up with a plan.
Get your mind out of the gutter; nothing like that happened, instead, they just went to an
oracle to talk about it. The oracle instructed Deucalion to "throw the bones of his mother
behind his shoulder." These instructions were not literal, instead referring to rocks, or
the "bones" of Gaea, Mother Earth. Deucalion and Pyrrha did what anyone would do in this situation:
they started throwing rocks. As soon as each rock touched the ground, it would transform into a
human being. The rocks thrown by Deucalion became men, and the rocks thrown by Pyrrha became women.
So, while Pandora was meant to bring about the destruction of humanity,
it was her daughter, along with Deucalion,
who brought it back from the brink of extinction. Where Pandora destroyed, intentionally or not,
Pyrrha created. And both of them were forced to deal with Zeus and his grudge against humanity.
It should be noted that while Pandora's box was actually a pithos, there is another Greek Myth
featuring a box that punished the person for opening it. In the story of Psyche,
a beautiful mortal woman and the beloved of Eros, Aphrodite's son and the god of desire,
Aphrodite put her through a series of trials. These were difficult tasks intended
to punish Psyche for her relationship with Eros, including gathering water from the River Styx.
For her final task, Psyche was presented with a golden box that she was to take into the
Underworld and bring to Persephone. There, she would fill the box with a bit of Persephone's
beauty and deliver it back to Aphrodite. After successfully journeying into the
Underworld, Psyche found Persephone and shared Aphrodite's request. Happy to help Aphrodite,
Persephone filled the box. Then, as Psyche made her way back to complete her errand for
the goddess, she became consumed with curiosity about the box's contents.
Wanting to take a look for herself, she opened the box to sneak a peek at the beauty inside. However,
there was no beauty to be found. Instead, there was a dark cloud that overwhelmed her,
plunging her into a deep, coma-like sleep from which only a god could wake her.
Some scholars believe that part of the transition from Pandora's Jar to
a Box was due to the stories of Pandora and Psyche being mixed up and the two
vessels conflated with one another. There are significant differences between the two myths,
however, so it's difficult to see how that confusion would have occurred. When it comes
to the spread of myths and the way in which they shift and change over the centuries,
it can be difficult to pinpoint where exactly those changes come from.
Since Hesiod first wrote about Pandora, her story has been retold and reimagined
countless times in countless artistic mediums. Many European artists,
such as Paolo Farinati and Marco Angelo del Moro, depicted Pandora in one way or another.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti notably depicted Pandora clad in red robes, holding the box in her hands
with an ambiguous expression. Famous Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte painted a seemingly
unrelated image of a man looking out at a street scene, with the title "Pandora's Box."
Pandora's Box was a popular subject in the world of theater as well,
with three French plays produced under the same title of "Pandora's Box," all in the first half
of the 18th century. These focused far less on Pandora herself and far more on the evils let
loose on the world when the box was opened. The first of these plays, produced in 1721, was a
commedia dell'arte style piece in which a happy village is disrupted by vices including greed,
envy, and hatred. The second, produced in 1729 and written by Philippe Poisson, features Mercury
(the Roman version of Hermes) interviewing the evils that are about to be unleashed.
These include Old Age, Migraine, Destitution, Hatred, Envy, Paralysis, Fever, and Transport.
The third play of the bunch was written by Pierre Brumoy and produced in 1743. Unlike the others,
it came with a subtitle: "Curiosity punished." This three-act comedy is set in the house of
Epimetheus, where Mercury delivers the box. This box contains seven flatterers: Honors, Pleasures,
Riches, Gaming (or gambling), Taste, Fashion, and False Knowledge. It also contains the seven evils:
envy, remorse, avarice, poverty, scorn, ignorance, and inconstancy. At the end of
the play, Hope arrives to save the day. In these interpretations of the story,
Pandora is barely involved at all. The blame is instead placed on the Gods who
have chosen to torment humanity and on the vices themselves that are the root of that suffering.
The myth has overall been difficult to interpret, inviting different readings depending on the
individual scholar, the cultural context they come from, and the time at which it is interpreted.
We’d like to throw our hat in the ring and give a bit of our own interpretation and speculation,
so let's quickly look at the interesting connection that we alluded to earlier.
There is another famous mythical story which includes the world's first woman
unleashing evil on mankind. The biblical story of Eve, who ate the apple from the
Tree of Knowledge and got herself and Adam evicted from the Garden of Eden.
There could be a reason for this overlap,
as some scholars suggest that Theogony could have been based on ancient Mesopotamian stories,
which may have also been a source for the story of Adam and Eve. However, it's also entirely possible
that the two stories emerged independently; we’ll let you decide in the comments below!
Now check out “Most Powerful Greek Gods (Ranked)”
Or watch “What Greek Parties Were Actually Like” instead!