Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(3)

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Perhaps, then, it’s time to look at Pandora’s story from the beginning, and see how it evolves and how she changes from one writer and artist to the next. As is so often the way with excellent things, we need to go back to the Greeks to see how it began. The earliest source we have is Hesiod, who lived in the late eighth century BCE in Boeotia in central Greece. He tells her story twice, the first time relatively briefly in his poem Theogony.

This poem is an origin story which catalogues the genealogy of the gods. First comes Chaos, then Earth, then the Underworld, and perhaps the first character we might recognize: Eros, who softens flesh and overcomes reason. Chaos creates Erebus and Night, Night creates Air and Day, Earth creates Heaven, and so on. Two generations on, we get to Zeus: Heaven (Ouranos) and Earth (Gaia) have multiple children including Kronos and Rhea. Ouranos turns out to be less than ideal parent material, hiding his children away in a cavern and refusing to let them out into the light. To win freedom from their oppression, Kronos eventually castrates his father with a sharp hook given to him by his mother, and throws the disembodied genitals into the sea (which is what creates Aphrodite. This is probably the time to start pondering whether Freud might have something to say about any of this). Kronos and Rhea in turn have multiple children: these pre-Olympian gods are known as Titans. Then Kronos also fails a basic fatherhood test, choosing to swallow each of his offspring whole. Rhea gives birth to Zeus in secret so he won’t be eaten, then Zeus forces Kronos to regurgitate his older siblings and takes over the mantle of king of the gods for himself. It scarcely needs saying that family gatherings must have been fraught affairs.

Zeus is often described as clever and strategic, but he is soon thwarted twice by the wily Titan Prometheus. Hesiod is obviously looking for a story that explains why his fellow Greeks sacrifice the bones of an animal to the gods, and keep the choice cuts of meat for themselves. Given that sacrifice should presumably involve the loss of something good, and given that the bones are not the best bit of a dead ox, an explanation is required. So Hesiod tells us that, at a place called Mekone, Prometheus performed some sleight of hand. Given the task of dividing meat into a portion for the gods and one for mortals, he hides the meat beneath the ox’s stomach and offers it to Zeus, and arranges the bones for men under a piece of glistening fat. Zeus complains that his portion looks the less appetizing and Prometheus explains that Zeus has first pick, so should choose whichever portion he prefers. The king of the gods makes his choice and only afterwards sees that he has been deceived: mortals get the good stuff and the gods are stuck with a pile of bones.

Prometheus’ second piece of trickery is outright theft: he steals fire (which belongs to the gods) and shares it with mortals. He is famously punished for this by being tied to a rock and having his liver pecked out by an eagle. His immortality means that his liver grows back, so the whole grisly business can begin anew each day. Zeus is so incensed by the improvement in mortal lives which fire has brought that he decides to give us an evil (kakon)6 to balance things out. He gets Hephaestus to mould from the earth the likeness of a young woman. The goddess Athene dresses the unnamed maiden in silver clothes and gives her a veil and a golden crown, decorated with images of wild animals. When Hephaestus and Athene have finished their work, they show the kalon kakon, ant’agathoio7 – beautiful evil, the price of good – to the other gods, who realize that mortal men will have no device or remedy against her. From this woman, Hesiod says, comes the whole deadly race of women. Always nice to be wanted.

For a story which is told in so few words, this takes a lot of unpacking. Firstly, why doesn’t Hesiod use Pandora’s name? Secondly, is Hesiod really saying that women are a separate race from men? In which case, Pandora is very different from Eve: Adam and Eve will be the ancestors of all future men and women alike, but Pandora will be the antecedent of women alone. Thirdly, where’s her jar, or box, or whatever? Again, we’ll have to wait for Hesiod’s second, longer version to find out more. And fourthly, what do we find out about Pandora herself? She’s autochthonous, i.e. made of the earth itself. She’s designed and created by the gods’ master craftsman, Hephaestus, and decorated by the cunning and skilled Athene. We know Pandora is beautiful. But what is she actually like? We get only one phrase which might tell us, before Hesiod gets side-tracked explaining how women will only want you if you aren’t poor, and comparing them unfavourably to bees. As Pandora is taken out to be shown to the other gods, who will marvel at how perfectly made she is, she delights in her dress – kosmo agalomenēn.8 It’s as though Hesiod has been charmed by this young woman, even as he is describing her as evil and deadly. Just created, and she’s taking innocent pleasure in having been given a pretty frock.

Hesiod’s second, more detailed version of the story is in Works and Days. This poem is largely written as a rebuke to his indolent brother, Perses, proving that the poet’s passive-aggression isn’t limited to women. Siblings are also in his hexametric firing line. Once again, Zeus is angered by Prometheus’ theft, exclaiming ‘I will give them an evil as the price of fire’ – ‘anti puros dōsō kakon’. He goes on to say that Pandora will be an evil ‘in which all men will delight, and which they will all embrace.’9 Again, he orders Hephaestus to do the hard work of creating; Pandora will be made from earth and water and given human voice and strength, but she will have the face and form of an immortal goddess. Athene is charged with teaching her to weave and Aphrodite must give her golden grace, painful desire and limb-gnawing sufferings (these latter two characteristics are presumably the feelings Pandora will provoke in men, but they are integral to her very being).