Pandora

Summary

Pandora is the first woman in Greek myth. Hephaestus made her from earth and water at the command of Zeus, and she was sent to mankind as the price of the fire Prometheus had stolen for them. Her story is told by Hesiod twice: in Works and Days with her name and her jar, and in the Theogony without a name.

Hesiod says the gods have hidden the means of life from men; otherwise a man would work for a day and have enough for a year. Zeus hid it because Prometheus deceived him in the division of the sacrifice, and he hid fire; Prometheus stole it and carried it to men in a hollow fennel stalk. Zeus said to him: you are glad you outwitted me and stole fire; as the price of fire I will give men an evil thing in which they will all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction. And he laughed. He told Hephaestus to mix earth with water, put into it human voice and strength, and make the likeness of a lovely maiden with a face like the goddesses'. He told Athena to teach her weaving, Aphrodite to shed on her head grace and the longing that wearies the limbs, and Hermes to put in her a shameless mind and a deceitful nature. Athena clothed her, the Graces and Persuasion put gold necklaces on her, the Hours crowned her with spring flowers, Hermes put lies and crafty words in her and gave her speech. He named her Pandora because all who live on Olympus gave her a gift, a plague to men who eat bread. Then he sent her with Hermes as a gift to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother, whom Prometheus had told never to accept a gift from Zeus; Epimetheus forgot, accepted her, and understood only when the evil was already in his house.

Before this, men lived on earth free from evils, hard toil and sickness. The woman lifted the great lid from the jar with her hands and scattered the evils among men. Only Hope stayed in the jar, under its rim, and did not fly out, because she put the lid back first, by the will of Zeus. The countless other evils wander among men: the earth is full of them and the sea, and diseases come upon men by day and night in silence, because Zeus took away their voice.

The Library ascribed to Apollodorus calls Pandora "the first woman fashioned by the gods" and says her daughter by Epimetheus was Pyrrha, wife of Deucalion, who survived the flood with her, and the two of them made people again from stones.

The idea her story turns on is the gift that is a punishment. Prometheus gave men fire in secret; Zeus answered with a gift in the open, beautiful, adorned by every god, with evil inside it. In the Theogony Hesiod calls her "the beautiful evil" given as the price of the blessing, and "the sheer guile" no one escapes. A gift won by a trick is repaid by a gift of the same kind: Epimetheus, who thinks after the thing has happened, accepted the present and understood once it was inside his house. And at the end of the story Hope stays in the jar, so men live among evils that came out and a hope that did not.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the two Greek essays do not mention Pandora. Πανδώρα, Pandora, is two Greek words: πᾶν, "all", and δῶρον, "gift", with the feminine ending. Hesiod himself explains it so: every god gave her a gift. We read the two parts in Arabic as fann and darr. Greek p answers Arabic f, and in Lane al-fann is adorning, fannahu is "he cheated, deceived him; caused him to suffer loss; wearied him", and fannana al-nāsa is "he made the people consist of different sorts". D is d and r is r, and in Lane darra is said of milk that became copious and flowed, darrat al-samāʾ of a sky pouring abundant rain, and darrat al-dunyā ʿalā ahlihā of a world bountiful to its people; lillāhi darruka is "to God be attributed thy gift and what is received from thee", and Lane says a man's gift "was originally likened to the milk of a camel". So Pandora on this reading is "the adorned gift": fann holds what the gods did to her, adorning her with every kind and making her a deceit and a weariness, and darr what she is, an abundant gift that men are glad of.

Linguistic Root

Pandora, fann and darr

So the name has two senses in Greek: the woman to whom the gods gave everything, and the earth that gives everything. Arabic darr holds both: it is said of an udder, a sky or the world when its giving is abundant, and of a man's gift. Lane also gives darr as "a deed, whether good or evil", which is what Pandora is in Hesiod: "the beautiful evil".

Lane, f-n-n: fannahu, he drove him away; he put him off in paying his debt; he cheated, deceived him, made him suffer loss, wearied him; al-fann, adorning; fannana al-ḥadīth, he diversified the story; fannana al-nās, he made the people of different sorts. Hesiod's text has all these acts: Pandora was adorned with necklaces, flowers and clothing, every god put a kind of gift into her, Hermes put deceit into her, and she brought weariness to men.

The sounds: Arabic f regularly answers Greek π, n is n, d is δ, r is ρ, the long vowel between them answers ω, and the final a is the feminine ending. The limit of the reading is that πᾶς and δῶρον are among the most native Greek words, each with an Indo-European family, δῶρον belonging with δίδωμι, "to give", so the reading meets them from another family.

Key Mythic Narratives

The woman without a name in the Theogony

In the Theogony Hesiod neither names her nor mentions the jar. Hephaestus forms her from earth in the likeness of a shy maiden; Athena dresses her in a silvery robe, an embroidered veil and garlands of flowers; and Hephaestus makes her with his own hands a golden crown worked with many creatures of land and sea, as if alive and with voices. When he brought her out before gods and men, wonder seized them at "the sheer guile" no one escapes. Hesiod says the race of women comes from her, and likens them to the drones that eat in the hive what the working bees gather; then he makes marriage a second evil: the man who refuses to marry grows old with no one to tend him and his kin divide his goods, and the man who marries even a good wife lives with good and evil contending in his house.

Hope in Prometheus

In the play ascribed to Aeschylus, Prometheus says he stopped men from foreseeing their death and made blind hopes dwell in them, and then gave them fire. So in the play hope is Prometheus's gift, and in Works and Days it is what stayed in Pandora's jar.

Symbolic Reading

The essay "Rereading Greek Myths" does not mention Pandora; it reads Prometheus's fire as humanity's discovery of how to kindle fire, and his punishment as the price of progress: every technique comes at a cost. In Hesiod's text Pandora is that price in so many words, "the price of fire". The essay reads the golden age of Works and Days, when people lived without work, as the time of hunting and gathering before farming. Hesiod puts Pandora's story just before the story of the ages, and says that before her men lived without hard toil, and that after her the gods hid the means of life from them, so that a living had to be worked from the field.

In the text itself all the crafts of the gods meet in Pandora: clay from Hephaestus, weaving from Athena, grace from Aphrodite, speech and deceit from Hermes. She is the first made thing to carry all the arts, and the first to bring them into a man's house.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Norse myth the gods join to make humankind as they join to make Pandora, each giving a gift: Odin gives breath and life, the second mind and movement, the third face, speech, hearing and sight, on the page for Askr and Embla. In both stories speech is put into the made thing as a god's gift; they differ in that the northern gifts make wood alive, while the Olympian gifts make the woman an enchantment and a plague.

Her making from earth and water at Zeus's command places her beside Prometheus's moulding of people from clay, and its counterparts in the East, in the making of the first humans. Zeus's answering of Prometheus's trick with a trick of his own places her in the Trickster, and her being the price of fire makes her the other side of the gift of the culture heroes.