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The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. ''Elpis'' takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be absurd to represent either the presence of ills by their confinement in a jar or the presence of hope by its escape from one."<ref>West 1988, 169–70.</ref> Hope is thus preserved as a benefit for humans.<ref>Taking the jar to serve as a prison at some times and as a pantry at others will also accommodate another pessimistic interpretation of the myth. In this reading, attention is paid to the phrase ''moune Elpis'' &ndash; "only Hope," or "Hope alone." A minority opinion construes the phrase instead to mean "empty Hope" or "baseless Hope": not only are humans plagued by a multitude of evils, but they persist in the fruitless hope that things might get better. Thus Beall 1989 227–28.</ref>
The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. ''Elpis'' takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be absurd to represent either the presence of ills by their confinement in a jar or the presence of hope by its escape from one."<ref>West 1988, 169–70.</ref> Hope is thus preserved as a benefit for humans.<ref>Taking the jar to serve as a prison at some times and as a pantry at others will also accommodate another pessimistic interpretation of the myth. In this reading, attention is paid to the phrase ''moune Elpis'' &ndash; "only Hope," or "Hope alone." A minority opinion construes the phrase instead to mean "empty Hope" or "baseless Hope": not only are humans plagued by a multitude of evils, but they persist in the fruitless hope that things might get better. Thus Beall 1989 227–28.</ref>

==''Pithos'' into "box"==
{{Main|Pandora's box}}
The mistranslation of ''pithos'', a large storage jar, as "box"<ref>The development of this transformation was sketched by [[Jane Ellen Harrison]], "Pandora's Box" ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' '''20''' (1900: 99–114); she traced the mistranslation as far as Lilius Giraldus of Ferrara, in his ''Historiarum Deorum Syntagma'' (1580), in which ''pithos'' was rendered ''pyxide'', and she linked the ''pithos'' with the ''Pithoigia'' aspect of the Athenian festival of [[Anthesteria]].</ref> is usually attributed to the sixteenth century humanist [[Erasmus of Rotterdam]] when he translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora into Latin. Hesiod's ''pithos'' refers to a large storage jar, often half-buried in the ground, used for wine, oil or grain.<ref>Cf. Verdenius, p.&nbsp;64.</ref> It can also refer to a funerary jar.<ref>Cf. Harrison, Jane Ellen, ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion'', Chapter II, The Pithoigia, pp.&nbsp;42–43. Cf. also Figure 7 which shows an ancient Greek vase painting in the University of Jena where Hermes is presiding over a body in a pithos buried in the ground. "In the vase painting in fig.7 from a lekythos in the University Museum of Jena we see a Pithoigia of quite other and solemn intent. A large pithos is sunk deep into the ground. It has served as a grave. ... The vase-painting in fig. 7 must not be regarded as an actual conscious representation of the Athenian rite performed on the first day of the [[Anthesteria]]. It is more general in content; it is in fact simply a representation of ideas familiar to every Greek, that the pithos was a grave-jar, that from such grave-jars souls escaped and to them necessarily returned, and that Hermes was [[Psychopomp]]os, Evoker and Revoker of souls. The vase-painting is in fact only another form of the scene so often represented on Athenian white lekythoi, in which the souls flutter round the grave-stele. The grave-jar is but the earlier form of sepulture; the little winged figures, the Keres, are identical in both classes of vase-painting."</ref>

Erasmus, however, translated ''pithos'' into the Latin word ''[[Pyxis (pottery)|pyxis]]'', meaning "box".<ref>In his notes to Hesiod's ''Works and Days'' (p.&nbsp;168)[[Martin Litchfield West|M. L. West]] has surmised that Erasmus may have confused the story of Pandora with the story found elsewhere of a box which was opened by [[Cupid and Psyche|Psyche]]; the Panofskys (1956) follow him in this surmise.</ref> The phrase "Pandora's box" has endured ever since.
<gallery>
File:Pithos Louvre CA4523.jpg|A ''[[pithos]]'' from Crete, ca. 675 BC; Louvre
File:Wedding procession BM GR1920.12-21.1.jpg|An Attic ''[[Pyxis (pottery)|pyxis]]'', 440–430 BC; British Museum
</gallery>


==All-giving Pandora: a mythic inversion==
==All-giving Pandora: a mythic inversion==

Revision as of 11:58, 18 November 2010

For other uses, see Pandora (disambiguation).
Pandora (1861), by Pierre Loison (1816–1886)

In Greek mythology, Pandora (ancient Greek, Πανδώρα, derived from πᾶν "all" and δῶρον "gift", thus "all-gifted", "all-endowed") was the first woman.[1] As Hesiod related it, each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mold her out of earth as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, and all the gods joined in offering her "seductive gifts". Her other name, inscribed against her figure on a white-ground kylix in the British Museum,[2] is Anesidora, "she who sends up gifts,"[3] up implying "from below" within the earth. According to the myth, Pandora opened a jar (pithos), in modern accounts sometimes mistranslated as "Pandora's box" (see below), releasing all the evils of mankind— although the particular evils, aside from plagues and diseases, are not specified in detail by Hesiod — leaving only Hope inside once she had closed it again.[4] She opened the jar out of simple curiosity and not as a malicious act.[5]

The myth of Pandora is ancient, appears in several distinct Greek versions, and has been interpreted in many ways. In all literary versions, however, the myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world. In the seventh century BC, Hesiod, both in his Theogony (briefly, without naming Pandora outright, line 570) and in Works and Days, gives the earliest literary version of the Pandora story; however, there is an older mention of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon mankind in Homer's Iliad:

The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Zeus' palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Zeus the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Zeus sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.[6]

Hesiod's Theogony

Jules Joseph Lefebvre: Pandora, 1882

The Pandora myth first appears in lines 560–612 of Hesiod's poem in epic meter, the Theogony (ca. 8th–7th centuries BC), without ever giving the woman a name. After humans have received the stolen gift of fire from Prometheus, an angry Zeus decides to give men a punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the race of men. After Hephaestus does so, Athena dressed her in a silvery gown, an embroidered veil, garlands and an ornate crown of gold. This woman goes unnamed in the Theogony, but is presumably Pandora, whose myth Hesiod revisited in Works and Days. When she first appears before gods and mortals, "wonder seized them" as they looked upon her. But she was "sheer guile, not to be withstood by men." Hesiod elaborates (590–93):

From her is the race of women and female kind:
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble,
no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.

Hesiod goes on to lament that men who try to avoid the evil of women by avoiding marriage will fare no better (604–7):

He reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend his years,
and though he at least has no lack of livelihood while he lives,
yet, when he is dead, his kinsfolk divide his possessions amongst them.

Hesiod concedes that occasionally a man finds a good wife, but still (609) "evil contends with good."

Hesiod's Works and Days

The more famous version of the Pandora myth comes from another of Hesiod's poems, Works and Days. In this version of the myth (lines 60–105), Hesiod expands upon her origin, and moreover widens the scope of the misery she inflicts on mankind. As before, she is created by Hephaestus, but now more gods contribute to her completion (63–82): Athena taught her needlework and weaving (63–4); Aphrodite "shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs" (65–6); Hermes gave her "a shameful mind and deceitful nature" (67–8); Hermes also gave her the power of speech, putting in her "lies and crafty words" (77–80) ; Athena then clothed her (72); next she, Persuasion and the Charites adorned her with necklaces and other finery (72–4); the Horae adorned her with a garland crown (75). Finally, Hermes gives this woman a name: Pandora – "All-gifted" – "because all the Olympians gave her a gift" (81).[7] In this retelling of her story, Pandora's deceitful feminine nature becomes the least of mankind's worries. For she brings with her a jar or, in most stories, a box [8][9] containing[10] "burdensome toil and sickness that brings death to men" (91–2), diseases (102) and "a myriad other pains" (100). Prometheus had (fearing further reprisals) warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus. But Epimetheus did not listen; he accepted Pandora, who promptly scattered the contents of her jar. As a result, Hesiod tells us, "the earth and sea are full of evils" (101). One item, however, did not escape the jar (96–9), hope:

Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house,
she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not
fly away. Before [she could], Pandora replaced the
lid of the jar. This was the will of aegis-bearing
Zeus the Cloudgatherer.

He does not tell the reader why hope remained in the jar.[11]

Hesiod closes with this moral (105): "Thus it is not possible to escape the mind of Zeus."

Later embellishments

Archaic and Classic Greek literature seem to make no further mention of Pandora, though Sophocles wrote a satyr play Pandora, or The Hammerers of which virtually nothing is known. Sappho may have made reference to Pandora in a surviving fragment.[12]

Later mythographers filled in minor details or added postscripts to Hesiod's account. For example, Apollodorus and Hyginus each make explicit what might be latent in the Hesiodic text: Epimetheus married Pandora. They each add that they had a daughter, Pyrrha, who married Deucalion and survived the deluge with him. However, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, fragment #2, had made a "Pandora" one of the daughters of Deucalion, and the mother of Graecus by Zeus. The 15th-century monk Annio da Viterbo credited a manuscript that he asserted that he had found to the Chaldean historian of the 3rd century BC, Berossus, where "Pandora" was also named as a daughter-in-law of Noah; this attempt to conjoin pagan and scriptural narrative is recognized as a forgery.

In a major departure from Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara tells us:[13]

Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety.

Theognis seems to be hinting at a myth in which the jar contained blessings rather than evils. In this, he appears to follow a possibly pre-Hesiodic tradition, preserved by the second-century fabulist Babrius,[14] that the gods sent a jar containing blessings to humans. A "foolish man" (not Pandora) opened the jar, and most of the blessings were lost forever. Only hope remained, "to promise each of us the good things that fled."

An independent Pandora tradition that does not square with any of the literary sources is the tradition in the visual repertory of Attic red-figure vase-painters, which sometimes supplements, sometimes ignores, the written testimony; in these representations the upper part of Pandora is visible rising from the earth, "a chthonic goddess like Gaia herself."[15] Sometimes,[16] but not always, she is labeled Pandora.

John William Waterhouse: Pandora, 1896

Difficulties of interpretation

Historic interpretations of the Pandora figure are rich enough to have offered Erwin Panofsky scope for monographic treatment.[17] M. L. West writes that the story of Pandora and her jar is from a pre-Hesiodic myth, and that this explains the confusion and problems with Hesiod's version and its inconclusiveness.[18] He writes that in earlier myths, Pandora was married to Prometheus, and cites the ancient Hesiodic Catalogue of Women as preserving this older tradition, and that the jar may have at one point contained only good things for mankind. He also writes that it may have been that Epimetheus and Pandora and their roles were transposed in the pre-Hesiodic myths, a "mythic inversion". He remarks that there is a curious correlation between Pandora being made out of earth in Hesiod's story, to what is in Apollodorus that Prometheus created man from water and earth.[18][19] Hesiod's myth of Pandora's jar, then, could be an amalgam of many variant early myths.

In Hesiodic scholarship, the interpretive crux has endured:[20] Is Hope's imprisonment inside a jar full of evils for mankind a benefit for mankind, or a further bane? A number of mythology textbooks echo the sentiments of M. L. West: "[Hope's retention in the jar] is comforting, and we are to be thankful for this antidote to our present ills."[21] Some scholars such as Mark Griffith, however, take the opposite view: "[Hope] seems to be a blessing withheld from men so that their life should be the more dreary and depressing."[22] One's interpretation hangs on two related questions: First, how are we to render elpis, the Greek word usually translated as "hope"? Second, does the jar preserve Elpis for men, or keep Elpis away from men?

The first question might confuse the non-specialist. But as with most ancient Greek words, elpis can be translated a number of ways. A number of scholars prefer the neutral translation of "expectation." But expectation of what? Classical authors use the word elpis to mean "expectation of bad," as well as "expectation of good." Statistical analysis demonstrates that the latter sense appears five times more than the former in all of ancient Greek literature.[23] Others hold the minority view that elpis should be rendered, "expectation of evil" (vel sim).[24]

How one answers the first question largely depends on the answer to the second question: should we interpret the jar to function as a prison, or a pantry?[25] The jar certainly serves as a prison for the evils that Pandora released – they only affect mankind once outside the jar. Some have argued that logic dictates, therefore, that the jar acts as a prison for Elpis as well, withholding it from men.[26] If one takes elpis to mean expectant hope, then the myth's tone is pessimistic: All the evils in the world were scattered from Pandora's jar, while the one potentially mitigating force, Hope, remains locked securely inside.[27]

This interpretation raises yet another question, complicating the debate: are we to take Hope in an absolute sense, or in a narrow sense where we understand Hope to mean hope only as it pertains to the evils released from the jar? If Hope is imprisoned in the jar, does this mean that human existence is utterly hopeless? This is the most pessimistic reading possible for the myth. A less pessimistic interpretation (still pessimistic, to be sure) understands the myth to say: countless evils fled Pandora's jar and plague human existence; the hope that we might be able to master these evils remains imprisoned inside the jar. Life is not hopeless, but each of us is hopelessly human.[28]

It is also argued that hope was simply one of the evils in the jar, the false kind of hope, and was no good for mankind, since, later in the poem, Hesiod writes that hope is empty (498) and no good (500) and makes mankind lazy by taking away his industriousness, making him prone to evil.[29]

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."[30]

An objection to the hope is good/the jar is a prison interpretation counters that, if the jar is full of evils, then what is expectant hope – a blessing – doing among them? This objection leads some to render elpis as the expectation of evil, which would make the myth's tone somewhat optimistic: although humankind is troubled by all the evils in the world, at least we are spared the continual expectation of evil, which would make life unbearable.[24]

The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. Elpis takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be absurd to represent either the presence of ills by their confinement in a jar or the presence of hope by its escape from one."[31] Hope is thus preserved as a benefit for humans.[32]

Pithos into "box"

Main article: Pandora's box

The mistranslation of pithos, a large storage jar, as "box"[33] is usually attributed to the sixteenth century humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam when he translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora into Latin. Hesiod's pithos refers to a large storage jar, often half-buried in the ground, used for wine, oil or grain.[34] It can also refer to a funerary jar.[35]

Erasmus, however, translated pithos into the Latin word pyxis, meaning "box".[36] The phrase "Pandora's box" has endured ever since.

  • A pithos from Crete, ca. 675 BC; Louvre
    A pithos from Crete, ca. 675 BC; Louvre
  • An Attic pyxis, 440–430 BC; British Museum
    An Attic pyxis, 440–430 BC; British Museum

All-giving Pandora: a mythic inversion

The etymology of Pandora's name, "all-gifted" provided in Works and Days is an incorrect folk etymology[citation needed]. Pandora properly means "all-giving" rather than "all-gifted."[citation needed] Certain vase paintings dated to the 5th century BC likewise indicate that the pre-Hesiodic myth of the goddess Pandora endured for centuries after the time of Hesiod. An alternate name for Pandora attested on a white-ground kylix (ca. 460 BC) is Anesidora, which similarly means "she who sends up gifts."[37] This vase painting clearly depicts Hephaestus and Athena putting the finishing touches on the first woman, as in the Theogony. Written above this figure (a convention in Greek vase painting) is the name Anesidora. More commonly, however, the epithet anesidora is applied to Gaea or Demeter.

This connection of Pandora to Gaea and Demeter through the name Anesidora provides a clue as to Pandora's evolution as a mythic figure. In classical scholarship it is generally posited that—for female deities in particular—one or more secondary mythic entities sometimes "splinter off" (so to speak) from a primary entity, assuming aspects of the original in the process. The most famous example of this is the putative division of all the aspects of the so-called Great Goddess into a number of goddesses with more specialized functions—Gaea, Demeter, Persephone, Artemis and Hecate among them. Pandora appears to be just such a product of this process.[citation needed] In a previous incarnation now lost to us, Pandora/Anesidora would have taken on aspects of Gaea and Demeter. She would embody the fertility of the earth and its capacity to bear grain and fruits for the benefit of humankind.[38] Jane Ellen Harrison[39] turned to the repertory of vase-painters to shed light on aspects of myth that were left unaddressed or disguised in literature. The story of Pandora was repeated on Greek ceramics. On a fifth century amphora in the Ashmolean Museum (her fig.71) the half-figure of Pandora emerges from the ground, her arms upraised in the epiphany gesture, to greet Epimetheus.[40] A winged ker with a fillet hovers overhead: "Pandora rises from the earth; she is the Earth, giver of all gifts," Harrison observes.

Nicolas Régnier: Allegory of Vanity — Pandora, c. 1626. Régnier portrayed Pandora with a jar, not a box.

Over time this "all-giving" goddess somehow devolved into an "all-gifted" mortal woman. T. A. Sinclair, commenting on Works and Days[41] argues that Hesiod shows no awareness of the mythology of such a divine "giver". A.H. Smith,[42] however, notes that in Hesiod's account Athena and the Seasons brought wreaths of grass and spring flowers to Pandora, indicating that Hesiod was conscious of Pandora's original "all-giving" function. Jane Ellen Harrison sees in Hesiod's story "evidence of a shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in Greek culture. As the life-bringing goddess Pandora is eclipsed, the death-bringing human Pandora arises."[43] Thus Harrison concludes "in the patriarchal mythology of Hesiod her great figure is strangely changed and diminished. She is no longer Earth-Born, but the creature, the handiwork of Olympian Zeus." (Harrison 1922:284) Robert Graves, quoting Harrison,[44] asserts of the Hesiodic episode that "Pandora is not a genuine myth, but an anti-feminist fable, probably of his own invention." H.J.Rose wrote that the myth of Pandora is decidedly more illiberal than that of epic in that it makes Pandora the origin of all of Man's woes with her being the exemplification of the bad wife.[45]

The Hesiodic myth did not, however, completely obliterate the memory of the all-giving goddess Pandora. A scholium to line 971 of Aristophanes' The Birds mentions a cult "to Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life".[46]

In fifth-century Athens Pandora made a prominent appearance in what, at first, appears an unexpected context, in a marble relief or bronze appliqués as a frieze along the base of the Athena Parthenos the culminating experience on the Acropolis; there Jeffrey M. Hurwit has interpreted her presence as an "anti-Athena" reinforcing civic ideologies of patriarchy and the "highly gendered social and political realities of fifth-century Athens."[46] Interpretation has never come easy: Pausanias (i.24.7) merely noted the subject and moved on. Jeffrey Hurwit has argued that Pandora represents an "anti-Athena", similarly a child of no mother, an embodiment of the need for the patriarchal rule that the virginal Athena, rising above her sex, defended.

Pandora's relationship to Eve of the Genesis account

Numerous similarities exist between the Pandora of Greek mythology and Eve of the Judaic book of Genesis. Both stories include an account of:

  1. The divine creation of the first woman.
  2. Disobedience to a divine command by that first woman.
  3. A great calamity experienced by all mankind brought on by this woman's disobedience to a divine command, and
  4. An attempt at explaining the origin of all resulting suffering and evil subsequently experienced by mankind.

[47] [48] [49]

Notes

  1. ^ "Scatter-brained Epimetheus who from the first was a mischief to men who eat bread; for it was he who first took of Zeus the woman, the maiden whom he had formed." (Hesiod, Theogony 510 ff (Hugh G. -White, translator)
  2. ^ B.M. 1881,0528.1: white-ground cup from Nola, painted by the Tarquinia painter, ca 470–460 BCE (British Museum on-line catalogue entry)
  3. ^ Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion 3rd ed., 1922:281. If Anesidora/Pandora were already "all-gifted", this would be an instance of mythic inversion.
  4. ^ Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, (90). Before what was released from the jar, mankind had no need of toilsome labor, there were no sickness and evils in life. When Pandora opened the jar, this all changed and mankind was exposed to heavy labor, sickness [Zeus had taken away the 'voices' of the diseases as is written a few lines later (100)], and 'ills' (evils). "For ere this the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills and hard toil and heavy sicknesses which bring the Fates upon men ... Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils and the sea is full. Of themselves diseases come upon men continually by day and by night, bringing mischief to mortals silently; for wise Zeus took away speech from them."
  5. ^ Cf. Verdenius, p. 65. "This does not imply she acted from malice. It is true that she had a shameless character, but the fact that she quickly put on the lid again shows that she was 'surprised and frightened by the results of her actions. It was not her cunning and wiliness that prompted her to open the jar, but her curiosity'..."
  6. ^ Homer, Iliad, 24:527.; on-line Greek and English text Theoi Project: Pandora
  7. ^ In Greek, Pandora has an active rather than a passive meaning; hence, Pandora properly means "All-giving." The implications of this mistranslation are explored in "All-giving Pandora: mythic inversion?" below.
  8. ^ A pithos is a very large jar, usually made of rough-grained terra cotta, used for storage.
  9. ^ Cf. Verdenius, p. 64, comment on line 94, on pithos. "Yet Pandora is unlikely to have brought along the jar of ills from heaven, for Hes. would not have omitted describing such an important detail. According to Proclus, Prometheus had received the jar of ills from the satyrs and deposited it with Epimetheus, urging him not to accept Pandora. Maz. [Paul Mazon in his Hesiode] suggests that Prometheus probably had persuaded the satyrs to steal the jar from Zeus, when the latter was about to pour them out over mankind. This may have been a familiar tale which Hes. thought unnecessary to relate."
  10. ^ Contra M. L. West, Works and Days, p. 168. "Hesiod omits to say where the jar came from, and what Pandora had in mind when she opened it, and what exactly it contained". West goes on to say this contributes to the "inconclusive Pandora legend".
  11. ^ Cf. Verdenius, p. 66, regarding line 96, elpis. Verdenius says there are a vast number of explanations. "He does not tell us why elpis remained in the jar. There is a vast number of modern explanations, of which I shall discuss only the most important ones. They may be divided into two classes according as they presume that the jar served (1) to keep elpis for man, or (2) to keep off elpis from man. In the first case the jar is used as a pantry, in the second case it is used as a prison (just as in Hom. E 387). Furthermore, elpis may be regarded either (a) as a good, or (b) as an evil. In the first case it is to comfort man in his misery and a stimulus rousing his activity, in the second case it is the idle hope in which the lazy man indulges when he should be working honestly for his living (cf. 498). The combination of these alternatives results in four possibilities which we shall now briefly consider."
  12. ^ Sappho, fr. 207 in Lobel and Page.
  13. ^ Theognis, 1135ff.
  14. ^ Babrius, Fabulla lviii.
  15. ^ Jeffrey M. Hurwit, "Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos" American Journal of Archaeology 99.2 (April 1995:171–186) p. 177.
  16. ^ E.g. as on a volute krater, ca 450 BC, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford G 275), Hurwit, p. 276 fig. 7.
  17. ^ Panofsky, Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York, 1962).
  18. ^ a b West, Works and Days, p. 164.
  19. ^ Apollodorus, Library and Epitome, ed. Sir James George Frazer.
  20. ^ Dora Panofsky and Erwin Panofsky examined the post-Renaissance mythos (Pandora was not a subject of medieval art) in Pandora's Box. The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York: Pantheon, Bollingen series) 1956.
  21. ^ West 1978:96.
  22. ^ Griffith 1983:250.
  23. ^ Leinieks 1984, 1–4.
  24. ^ a b E.g., Verdenius 1985; Blumer 2001.
  25. ^ The prison/pantry terminology comes from Verdenius 1985 ad 96.
  26. ^ Scholars holding this view (e.g., Walcot 1961, 250) point out that the jar is termed an "unbreakable" (in Greek: arrektos) house. In Greek literature (e.g., Homer, and elsewhere in Hesiod), the word arrektos is applied to structures meant to sequester or otherwise restrain its contents.
  27. ^ See Griffith 1984 above.
  28. ^ Thus Athanassakis 1983 in his commentary ad Works 96.
  29. ^ Cf. Jenifer Neils, in The Girl in the Pithos: Hesiod’s Elpis, in "Periklean Athens and its Legacy. Problems and Perspectives", pp. 40–41 especially.
  30. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich, Human, All Too Human. Cf. Section Two, On the History of Moral Feelings. "Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods' gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the 'lucky jar.' Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that the jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good—it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."
  31. ^ West 1988, 169–70.
  32. ^ Taking the jar to serve as a prison at some times and as a pantry at others will also accommodate another pessimistic interpretation of the myth. In this reading, attention is paid to the phrase moune Elpis – "only Hope," or "Hope alone." A minority opinion construes the phrase instead to mean "empty Hope" or "baseless Hope": not only are humans plagued by a multitude of evils, but they persist in the fruitless hope that things might get better. Thus Beall 1989 227–28.
  33. ^ The development of this transformation was sketched by Jane Ellen Harrison, "Pandora's Box" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 20 (1900: 99–114); she traced the mistranslation as far as Lilius Giraldus of Ferrara, in his Historiarum Deorum Syntagma (1580), in which pithos was rendered pyxide, and she linked the pithos with the Pithoigia aspect of the Athenian festival of Anthesteria.
  34. ^ Cf. Verdenius, p. 64.
  35. ^ Cf. Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Chapter II, The Pithoigia, pp. 42–43. Cf. also Figure 7 which shows an ancient Greek vase painting in the University of Jena where Hermes is presiding over a body in a pithos buried in the ground. "In the vase painting in fig.7 from a lekythos in the University Museum of Jena we see a Pithoigia of quite other and solemn intent. A large pithos is sunk deep into the ground. It has served as a grave. ... The vase-painting in fig. 7 must not be regarded as an actual conscious representation of the Athenian rite performed on the first day of the Anthesteria. It is more general in content; it is in fact simply a representation of ideas familiar to every Greek, that the pithos was a grave-jar, that from such grave-jars souls escaped and to them necessarily returned, and that Hermes was Psychopompos, Evoker and Revoker of souls. The vase-painting is in fact only another form of the scene so often represented on Athenian white lekythoi, in which the souls flutter round the grave-stele. The grave-jar is but the earlier form of sepulture; the little winged figures, the Keres, are identical in both classes of vase-painting."
  36. ^ In his notes to Hesiod's Works and Days (p. 168)M. L. West has surmised that Erasmus may have confused the story of Pandora with the story found elsewhere of a box which was opened by Psyche; the Panofskys (1956) follow him in this surmise.
  37. ^ Phipps, William E., Eve and Pandora Contrasted, in Theology Today, v.45, n.1, April 1988, Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary. Wherein Phipps writes: "Classics scholars suggest that Hesoid reversed the meaning of the name of an earth goddess called Pandora (all-giving) or Anesidora (one-who-sends-up-gifts). Vase paintings and literary texts give evidence of Pandora as a mother earth figure who was worshipped by some Greeks. The main English commentary on Works and Days states that Hesiod shows no awareness of the mythology of a divine Pandora Anesidora giver of fertility."
  38. ^ Hence, possibly, the variant myth that Pandora's jar contained blessings for mankind.
  39. ^ Harrison, Prolegomena 1922, pp 280–83.
  40. ^ Compare the rising female figure, identified as Aphrodite, on the "Ludovisi Throne".
  41. ^ Sinclair, editor, Hesiod: Works and Days (London: Macmillan) 1932:12.
  42. ^ Smith, "The Making of Pandora" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 11 (1890, pp. 278–283), p 283.
  43. ^ William E. Phipps, "Eve and Pandora contrasted" Theology Today 45 on-line text
  44. ^ Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) 1922: 283–85 quoted in Graves, The Greek Myths (1955) 1960, sect.39.8 p. 148.
  45. ^ Cf. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Literature; From Homer to the Age of Lucian, Chapter III, Hesiod and the Hesiodic Schools, p. 61. "Its attitude towards women is decidedly more illiberal than that of epic; a good wife is indeed the best prize a man can win (702), but a bad one is the greatest curse; generally speaking women are a snare and a temptation (373–5) and Pandora was the origin of all our woes".
  46. ^ a b Jeffrey M. Hurwit, "Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos" American Journal of Archaeology 99.2 (April 1995: 171–186)
  47. ^ "Eve and Pandora contrasted". 1988. Retrieved 2010-11-18. Vol 45, No.1 - April 1988, a scholarly comparison of the myths of Pandora and the Genesis story of Eve.
  48. ^ "Pandora and Eve: Sex as the Root of All Evil". 1977. Retrieved 2010-11-18. Vol. 71, No. 3 (Nov., 1977), pp. 179-185, discussion of the sexual symbolism found in both the Pandora myth and the Genesis account of Eve.
  49. ^ "Pandora". 1998. Retrieved 2010-11-18. By Rhonda Tyree, a detailed contrast between Pandora and Eve and the patriarchal origins of both of these stories.

References

  • Athanassakis, A. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield (New York 1983).
  • Beall, E. "The Contents of Hesiod's Pandora Jar: Erga 94–98," Hermes 117 (1989) 227–30.
  • Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) 1922, pp. 280–85.
  • Griffith, Mark. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound Text and Commentary (Cambridge 1983).
  • Hesiod, Works and Days On-line text.
  • Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. with prolegomena and commentary (Oxford 1978).
  • Hesiod, Theogony, and Works and Days (Oxford 1988).
  • Kenaan, Pandora's Senses: The Feminine Character of the Ancient Text (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), pp. xii, 253 (Wisconsin Studies in Classics).
  • Kirk, G.S., Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley 1970) 226–32.
  • Lamberton, Robert, Hesiod, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0300040687. Cf. Chapter II, "The Theogony", and Chapter III, "The Works and Days", especially pp. 96–103 for a side-by-side comparison and analysis of the Pandora story.
  • Leinieks, V. "Elpis in Hesiod, Works and Days 96," Philologus 128 (1984) 1–8.
  • Moore, Clifford H. The Religious Thought of the Greeks, 1916.
  • Neils, Jenifer, The Girl in the Pithos: Hesiod’s Elpis, in "Periklean Athens and its Legacy. Problems and Perspectives", eds. J. M. Barringer and J. M. Hurwit (Austin : University of Texas Press), 2005, pp. 37–45.
  • Nilsson, Martin P. History of Greek Religion, 1949.
  • Phipps, William E., Eve and Pandora Contrasted, in Theology Today, v.45, n.1, April 1988, Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary.
  • Pucci, Pietro, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore 1977)
  • Rose, Herbert Jennings, A Handbook of Greek Literature; From Homer to the Age of Lucian, London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1934. Cf. especially Chapter III, Hesiod and the Hesiodic Schools, p. 61
  • Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, sub "Pandora" On-line text
  • William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) vol I:177, sub "Anesidora" "Spender" is a misprint of "sender", often repeated.
  • Verdenius, Willem Jacob, A Commentary on Hesiod Works and Days vv 1–382 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985). ISBN 9004074651. This work has a very in-depth discussion and synthesis of the various theories and speculations about the Pandora story and the jar. Cf. p. 62 and onwards.
  • Vernant, J. P., Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (New York 1990) 183–201.
  • Warner, M., Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (New York 1985) 213–40
  • West, M. L. Hesiod, Theogony, ed. with prolegomena and commentary (Oxford 1966).
  • West, M. L. Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. with prolegomena and commentary (Oxford 1978).
  • Zeitlin, Froma. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Princeton 1995).
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