Hey there Tiktakers!
Have you ever heard of the Pandora’s Box?
We are opening it today to share the story
with you guys!
It’s one of the greatest legends in greek
mythology and it’s part of Pandora’s story,
the first woman on Earth.
The most famous version is the one written
in the 7th century before Christ by the poet
Hesiod.
It’s a story about revenge, Zeus’ revenge
against men and against the titan Prometheos
who stole the sacred fire and gave it to them.
The father of the gods got furious and made
Hephaestus create the first woman out of clay.
Each god gave her a different gift: Athena
gave her wisdom, Apollo music, Aphrodite beauty
and Hermes eloquence.
Zeus himself gave her life and called her
Pandora, which means “the all-gifted”.
He offered her to Prometheus as his wife,
tho he rejected her, knowing after his treason,
any gift that came from Zeus would be a trap.
So, he took her to his brother Epimetheus
, who, despite the warnings, decided to marry
her.
As a wedding gift, Pandora got an oval jar
and not a box, as it’s usually said, but
a translation mistake led to this confusion.
She also had specific orders not to open it
under any circumstances.
But among all her gifts, gods had also given
Pandora a great sense of curiosity, so the
decided to open the jar anyway, to see what
was inside.
When she did so, all misfortune and evils
left it, invading our world.
Aging, sickness, insanity, vice, poverty,
crime… they all spread out, inevitably.
There was only one last thing, hidden in the
bottom: hope.
Pandora, when she realised what she had done,
she felt really sorry, and wanted to fix the
evil she had caused.
She then started to wander the earth, offering
men that hope, that one last thing she had
left.
Truth is, Pandora’s myth depicts, perfectly,
the completely masculine point of view they
had in Classic Greece, and generally, in the
Ancient world.
Those women who are curious and dont do as
told by men, are guilty of all evil.
And it also reminds us of the origins of the
world according to the Christian Bible, where
Eve eats the forbidden fruit, and because
of her, all evils are released.
Apart from this, it became very popular in
Western culture, and it even led to informal
expressions such as “opening Pandora’s
box”, when we wanna say an action is gonna
lead to bad consequences.
Or “hope is the last thing to die”, referring
to the last thing that was left inside the
box.
Pandora’s myth continues with her own daughter,
Pyrrha, who married Deucalion (dukéilion),
Prometheus’son.
When Zeus decided to punish men by flooding
the earth with torrential rain, they were
the only survivors, and they decided to go
ask the óracle how they could repopulate
the Earth.
He told them they had to throw her mom’s
bones along the way, over their shoulders.
Deucalion didn’t understand this desecration,
but Pyrrha explained that by “mother”
he meant Gaia, the personification of the
Earth, and that by bones he meant rocks.
So the stones they threw turned into men if
they were thrown by Deucalion, or into women
if they were thrown by Pyrrha.
This, turns us all into Pyrrha’s descendants.
And therefore, Pandora’s s well, the first
woman ever, who despite having released all
evils by accident, should also be remembered
as humanity’s grandma and
the guardian of hope.
