You know,
Mythology and folklore as a whole is a really incredible field to study
There's so much creativity and wonder, and it's really fun recognizing story elements that have persisted to the modern day
Or been adapted in one way or another to stories
we actually recognize.
But sometimes, you find a myth that really
Reminds you that you're studying a different culture from a different time
and place and that culture from a different time and place might have
held some pretty nasty attitudes towards your
demographic specifically, and they didn't hesitate to document those attitudes for posterity and that can kind of sting
*SIGH*
So this is the story of Pandora, the first woman whose entire gender was created by Zeus
specifically to be evil and sexy and make men's lives worse.
*Red inhales deeply*
I'd like to apologize in advance for what the comment section is going to look like.
So Pandora's story is told by Hesiod in the Theogony and Works and Days and it begins in the Greek Golden Age: A time before women
existed when mankind had just recently been sculpted from clay by the Titan Prometheus
Or possibly Zeus.
Whatever the case life was pretty swell; people were immortal, technology was all right, life was good .
Now, Prometheus apparently really liked humans
and he was always trying to look out for them whenever he could.
So when he realized that they kept having to burn all the
best bits of their meat as offerings to Zeus he decided to do something about it.
So he went to Zeus with two possible offerings: a nasty-looking ox stomach that was secretly full of prime beef or a bone wrapped in
delicious-looking fat that looked a lot tastier than it actually was.
Zeus picked the tasty looking option and...
accidentally said a sacrifice precedent where humanity got to keep all the best bits of the cow and just burned bones in fat.
So Zeus is pretty pissed both because of the disappointing sacrifices he's getting and Prometheus' sneaky subversion of his own supposed
omniscience, and he decides to confiscate humanity's fire access as punishment.
So this sucks for everybody and Prometheus again
Decides to do something about it.
So Prometheus sneaks up to Olympus and steals some fire storing it at a fennel stalk
While he brings it back to earth and gives it to humanity again
Zeus spots the fire in the distance and gets crazy pissed at Prometheus and decides to punish him first before he deals with humanity.
Prometheus, rather famously, is chained to a rock and his liver is ripped out and eaten by an eagle once a day.
Of course being an immortal titan his liver also grows back every night so the cycle can continue ad infinitum.
Lucky Prometheus...
So now this brings us to Pandora
Zeus decides to inflict a lasting punishment on humanity for reacquiring fire
And he conscripts all the Olympians to help him out
He has Hephaestus sculpt a beautiful body from clay and brings it alive with the four winds,
then Athena addresses her in fancy clothes, Aphrodite gives her a sex drive, Hermes gives her a brain and teaches her how a lie, and
basically all of Olympus gets in on the action, giving her all kinds of nifty presents and character flaws.
Hermes names her Pandora meaning all gifted
or all giving, depending on the translation, to represent the fact that every Olympian gave her a gift of some sort.
The end result Is that Pandora is a beautiful alluring creature
But secretly she's also cunning and sly.
You see she's pure evil because she lures you in by being hot
But then like she's secretly a person underneath.
That's right Hesiod's vision of evil is hot but not dumb
Pandora also, rather famously, has a Pithos with her that contains a whole mess of interesting evils to unleash on humanity and interestingly enough
There's no implication in Hesiod's telling of the story that she's unaware of this
Which doesn't really line up with later characterizations the paint Pandora as an insatiably curious dupe
Remember this Pandora is specifically not an idiot
That's what makes her so evil..!
So Zeus presents Pandora to Prometheus dumber brother : Epimetheus
and despite having been warned by the forward-thinking Prometheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus
Epimetheus is a being of pure hindsight and accepts her
This is a bad call as Pandora promptly dumps out the contents of her jar full of evil
and humanity is immediately stricken with all kinds of nasty things
Like natural lifespans and childbirth and swedish fish!
only one thing stays in the jar hope, representing the fact that humanity will always have: hope
(another exasperated sigh)
Greece I love you, but come on.
[Bon Jovi - You give love a bad name]