In the Greek Mythology, Pandora (in Greek old Πανδώρα / Pandốra , “all the gifts”) is the first woman. She is associated with the legend of the “Pandora's box” (in fact, an earthenware jar). She is sometimes called Anésidora “that which makes leave the present the depths” makes of it “the Goddess of the ground which governs fruitfulness”.

Caption

Pandora was created on the order of Zeus or Jupiter which wanted to be avenged for the men for the flight of fire by Prométhée. She was thus manufactured in clay by Héphaïstos; Athéna gave him then the life and equipped it; Aphrodite gave him the beauty; Apollo the musical talent, finally Hermes taught him the lie and art from persuasion.

Zeus offered the hand of Pandora to Épiméthée, brother of Prométhée. Although he promised in Prométhée to refuse the gifts coming from Zeus, Épiméthée accepted Pandore. Zeus gave a box to him, containing all the evils of humanity locked up by Prométhée to protect the men from them, in particular the Vieillesse, Work, the Disease, the Folie, the Defect, the Tromperie and Passion, as well as the Espérance while advising to him well never to open it.

Yielding to curiosity, Pandore opened the box: it thus released the diseases and misfortunes which it contained. It closed again the box to retain them too late, and only the Hope, slower to react, remained locked up there…

Interpretation

One can wonder about the direction of this legend. Why an earthenware jar containing all the evils of humanity would have also contained the Hope? It is Iliade which, with worms 527 and following, uses this term: in the house of Zeus, there were two earthenware jars, one locking up the goods, the other the evils. The Théogonie of Hésiode does not evoke it, it is satisfied to state that without woman, the life of the man is not livable, and with a woman, hardly more. Hésiode thus describes Pandore like a “so beautiful evil” ( καλὸν κακὸν / kalòn kakòn ).

For the name “Pandora”, it can have several significances: panta gilded , that which has all the gifts, or pantô dôrô , that to which one allots all the gifts.

The reason of the presence of the Hope with the evils is to be sought in a better translation of the Greek text. The exact term is ἐλπίς / elpís , which is defined as waiting of something; one translated it by hope, surely wrongly. A better translation would have been anticipation, even unreasoned fear; thus Elpides are the divinities of fears. Thanks to the convenient closing of the earthenware jar by Pandora, the men will suffer only from the evils, not from waiting of these evils, which is the worst probably of all.

They will not live in the perpetual fear of the evils to come, therefore their life will be livable. Prométhée is thus pleased to have delivered the men of the obsession of death. Indeed another interpretation still suggests that this last evil is to know the hour of its characteristic died, and the abatement which would follow by lack… of hope.

Another symbol is to be sought in this passage. The earthenware jar ( pithos ) is not only one simple amphora: it is a very large vase, which is used to store the grain. This vase can be filled of grain only by the effort, work with the field, and its contents are then a symbolic system of the human condition. Thereafter, it will be the woman who will open it and will be useful itself there, to nourish the family.

A bringing together of this myth can, moreover, being makes with the falls of Adam and Eve, in the Genèse (old will). In these two myths, it is the woman, however informed (by God in the Bible, or, here, by Prométhée and Zeus), who makes an irremediable error (by crunching the forbidden fruit in the Bible, or, here, by opening the Pandora's box), thus plunging humanity in a made life of evils and pains. However, the biblical version seems perhaps more lenient for the woman, who is pushed there with the fault by the snake tempter, and which does not carry the fault alone, since the fruit is divided with the man.

The last mentions gave a report on interpretations monotheist S (Judeo-Christian), representing the woman like the source of all the evils . On the contrary, mentality polytheist it, sees Pandore as that which gave to the man opportunity of improving in the tests and the adversity (what the monothéïstes call the evils ). It gave him also the force to face these tests with the hope ( the hope ). In pagan philosophy, Pandore is not the source of the evil; it is the source of the force, dignity and the beauty; since without adversity the human being cannot improve.

See too

• List of legendary objects

Sources

• Books of Science and life n°92 April 2006, p. 20.
• Mythology for the null , First editions, 2nd trim 2005, p. 49. ISBN 2-75400-025-9.

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