Pandora

The story

When Prometheus stole fire, Zeus did not shout. He smiled.

It was the smile of someone who has already decided on his revenge and is savouring every step of it. “Humans wanted fire,” he told the other gods. “Humans will get from me the evil they deserve. But they will get it as a gift, so that they welcome it with open arms.”

He called Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, the most skilful of them all. “Take clay and water. Make me a woman. Make her as beautiful as a goddess, with a human voice and a face nobody can take their eyes off.”

Hephaestus worked for days in his smoky forge. When he had finished, there in front of him stood a figure of clay, motionless and perfect. Hephaestus put a human being's strength into her, and the figure opened her eyes.

One by one, the other gods gave her a gift. Athena taught her to weave and dressed her in a silver robe. Aphrodite gave her a grace that made hearts ache. The Graces decked her with golden necklaces. The Seasons crowned her with spring flowers. Last of all, Hermes, the messenger, gave her a voice, and with the voice two more secret things: the art of lying, and sweet words that deceived.

Because of all these gifts, they gave her a name: Pandora, which in Greek means “all the gifts”.

Then Hermes took her down to earth, to the house of Epimetheus.

Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, was the one who always thought afterwards. Before he was chained up on the Caucasus, Prometheus had warned him: “Never accept a gift from Zeus. It’s a trick.” But when Epimetheus saw Pandora, he forgot everything. He had never seen anyone like her. He did not stop to think. He took her into his home, and married her.

At first, life was peaceful. Pandora learned the names of the flowers and the birds, she wove in the evenings by the fire, and men from the nearby villages came to hear her sing.

The humans of those days lived without hard work, without illness, without growing old. They knew neither pain nor mourning. They ate fruit, they danced, they slept in the grass. And Pandora watched them, and laughed, and sang with that voice of hers that filled the valley.

And yet, every day, there was one thing that troubled her.

In the corner of the house, near the hearth, stood a large earthenware jar, as tall as a child, closed with a heavy lid. It had always been there. Hesiod mentions no ban, but the stories told later say that Epimetheus had been given just one instruction: “Don’t open it. Ever.”

Nobody knew what was inside.

Pandora dusted it, looked at it, brushed it with her fingertips. Every morning she stood in front of it for a long time, with her head on one side.

“Epimetheus,” she asked one day, “what’s in there?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I was told not to open it.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. Trust me.”

She trusted him. For a day. For two. For a month.

But curiosity is a patient animal. It grows at night, while everyone is asleep. One evening Pandora found herself alone in front of the jar. The moonlight came in through the window and drew a white stripe across the lid. She thought she heard a sound, a rustling, like a thousand wings beating softly.

Just one look, she thought. One little look. Then I’ll close it again.

She put her hands on the lid. It was cold. She moved it a finger’s width, then two.

That was when they came out.

At first they made no sound. They came out like dark smoke, like a swarm of insects, in their hundreds, in their thousands. They passed over Pandora’s head, out through the window, into the night. They were all the evils of the world. Illness, which got into people’s bodies and made them shake. Old age, which began to mark their faces. Hard work, pain, war, envy, fear, hunger, death.

Pandora screamed. She tried to put the lid back on. She pushed against it with all her weight.

But by now the jar was empty. Almost.

When at last there was silence, there was still a sound, a very tiny one. A voice, inside the jar, knocking gently from under the rim.

Pandora trembled. She peered through the gap under the lid, just a little.

Down there, under the rim, was a small light.

It was not like the others. It was not frightening. It made no sound. It did not try to get out. It stayed there, still, like a tired butterfly. And Pandora closed the lid.

Its name was Hope.

Hesiod, the poet who told this story, says exactly that: Hope stayed inside the jar, under the rim, and did not fly away. Why the gods left it there, he does not say clearly. Many later stories let it out, to comfort people. Hesiod says only that from that day on, the world changed.

Humans discovered cold, wrinkles, funerals. They learned to work, to quarrel, to cry. But they also learned something else: that when everything seems lost, there is always a small light that comes on and tells you to wait just one more day.

For centuries, people blamed Pandora. They said it was she, the curious woman, who brought evil into the world. But that isn’t fair. It was Zeus who made her that way, with that hidden gift and that jar that must not be opened. Pandora did what anyone would have done: she wanted to understand.

One last thing, which few people know. What Pandora opened was not a box, as the story is often told: it was a large earthenware jar. The box was born by mistake, 500 years ago, when a scholar mistranslated a word.

And Hope? If you see her, don’t chase her away. She has never done anyone any harm.