Pandora's Jar
In brief
- After Prometheus stole fire for mankind, Zeus answered with a gift rather than a punishment: the first woman, shaped by the gods and sent down to marry Prometheus's brother.
- She arrived carrying a sealed jar, and when curiosity got the better of her she lifted the lid, releasing every sorrow that troubles people since.
- Only Hope was still inside when she closed it again, which is either the cruelty of the story or its consolation, depending on who is telling it.
Zeus had lost the argument about fire. Prometheus had stolen it back for humanity and hidden it in a fennel stalk, and no amount of punishment fixed on the thief could take it out of human hands again. So Zeus turned to the people who had been given it, and sent them something that looked like a gift.
Hephaestus shaped her out of earth and water. Athena taught her weaving and dressed her; Aphrodite gave her grace, and the ache that goes with it; Hermes put a cunning mind in her and a persuasive tongue. Each of the gods contributed something, which is what her name records: Pandora, all-gifted. Then she was sent down to Epimetheus, whose name means afterthought, and who accepted her despite his brother's standing instruction never to accept anything from Zeus.
She brought a jar with her, sealed, and was told not to open it. She opened it. What came out was everything that had not troubled the world before: sickness, hard labour, old age, quarrels, grief, scattering in every direction, silent, because Zeus had taken their voices so they could arrive without warning.
She got the lid back on with one thing still inside: Hope. Hesiod does not explain why Hope was in the jar with the sorrows, or whether keeping it under the lid was a mercy or the last of the punishments, and readers have been arguing about it ever since.
