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Pandora

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

This article is about the Greek mythological figure. for other meanings, see Pandora (disambiguation).

In Greek mythology, Pandora ("all gifted") was the first woman, fashioned by Zeus as part of his punishment of mankind for having stolen the secret of fire.

Contents

1 The legend

2 Commentary

3 Cultural Allusions to Pandora and her box

4 External link

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The legend

The titan Epimetheus ("hindsight") was responsible for giving a positive trait to each and every animal. However, when it was time to give man a positive trait, there was nothing left. Prometheus ("foresight"), his brother, felt that because man was superior to all other animals, man should have a gift no other animal possessed. So Prometheus set forth to steal fire from Zeus and handed it over to man.

Zeus was enraged and decided to punish Prometheus and his creation: mankind. To punish Prometheus, Zeus chained him in unbreakable fetters and set a vulture over him to eat his liver each day. Prometheus was an immortal, so the liver grew back every day, but he was still tormented daily from the pain.

To punish mankind, Zeus ordered the other gods to make Pandora as a poisoned gift for man. Pandora was given several traits from the different gods: Hephaestus molded her out of clay and gave her form; Aphrodite gave her beauty; and Apollo gave her musical talent and a gift for healing. Hermes then gave Pandora a box.

Before he was chained to the rock, Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to take any gifts from the gods. Epimetheus did not listen to his brother, however, and when Pandora arrived, he fell in love with her. Hermes told him that Pandora was a gift to the titan from Zeus, and he warned Epimetheus to not open the box, which was Pandora's dowry.

Until then, mankind had lived a life in a paradise without worry. Epimetheus told Pandora never to open the box she had received from Zeus. However, one day, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened it, releasing all the misfortunes of mankind (plague, sorrow, poverty, crime, etc.). Once opened, she shut it in time to keep one thing in the box: hope. The world remained extremely bleak for an unspecified interval, until Pandora "chanced" to revisit the box again, at which point Hope fluttered out. Thus, mankind always has hope in times of evil, but Hope has a great deal of catching up to do. (See also Garden of Eden.)

The daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora was Pyrrha, who married Deucalion and was one of the two who survived the deluge.

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Commentary

The story of Pandora's Box can be interpreted in more than one way, but one obvious moral of it is that of "curiosity killing the cat".

Some scholars contend that Pandora's "box" may have been a mistranslation, and instead her "box" may have been a large jar or vase, forged from the earth. In fact, there is some evidence that suggests Pandora herself was the jar. It was common in Ancient Greece to have jars with the image of women on them.

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Cultural Allusions to Pandora and her box

A play by Frank Wedekind, Die Büchse der Pandora in the original German
A film based on the Wedekind play directed by G. W. Pabst and starring Louise Brooks; see Pandora's Box (movie)
A video game designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the co-developer of Tetris; see Pandora's Box (game)
Pandora's Box is seen on the PBS TV show Between the Lions
The Box appeared in the Charmed episode Little Box of Horrors (http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-106/epid-399936/).
Pandora's Box was a key element in the second Tomb Raider movie, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Pandora's Box is a commercial BDSM establishment in New York City that was the setting for Nick Broomfield's documentary Fetishes
An album with the name "Pandora's Box", created by the band Aerosmith; See Pandora's Box (album)
Pandora's Box was a large box that could be found in God of War and was a key element used by Kratos to kill the God of War, Ares.