Pandora

Pandora, in Greek mythology, the first woman. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, after Prometheus, a divine trickster and one of the Titans, had stolen fire from heaven and bestowed it upon mortals, Zeus, the king of the gods, was determined to counteract this blessing. In retribution for the stolen fire, Zeus declared that he would give humankind an evil that mortals would nevertheless welcome and delight in. He accordingly commissioned Hephaestus (the god of fire and patron of craftsmen) to fashion a woman out of earth, upon whom the gods bestowed their choicest gifts.

The gods’ gifts to Pandora

Hesiod’s Works and Days describes how the gods contributed to Pandora’s creation. At Zeus’s command the gods bestowed qualities intended to make her appealing to mortals: Athena, the goddess of wisdom and crafts, taught her weaving; Aphrodite, the goddess of love, gave her beauty and powers of attraction; and Hermes, the messenger of the gods, endowed her with a capacity for deception. Hesiod connects her name, which translates to “All-Gifts,” to these divine contributions, which were intended to make her appealing to mortals despite Zeus’s plans to punish humanity.

Zeus then sent Pandora to Epimetheus, the god of afterthought and brother of Prometheus, who accepted her despite Prometheus’s warning against receiving gifts from Zeus. A later account by the Roman mythographer Hyginus identifies Pandora as Epimetheus’s wife and the mother of their daughter, Pyrrha.

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From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

Pandora’s jar

In Works and Days Pandora opened a large storage jar, known in Greek as a pithos, releasing suffering and disease into the world. Hesiod describes humanity as having previously lived without such hardships, but he does not explain what prompted Pandora to open the vessel. Only the female personification of Hope (Elpis) remained inside because the lid was shut by Pandora as per Zeus’s design.

A different version survives in a fable attributed to the Greek writer Babrius. In this account Zeus places beneficial things in a jar and entrusts it to an unnamed human. The person opens the vessel, allowing its contents to return to the gods, while Hope remains behind. Unlike Hesiod’s story the fable does not identify Pandora as the person responsible.

Why Pandora’s jar became a box

Although the container in Hesiod’s account is a jar, it became widely known as Pandora’s box through Renaissance retellings. In the 16th-century Latin version of the story, the humanist Erasmus used the Latin word pyxis, meaning a small box, in place of pithos. Erasmus’s retelling was slightly ambiguous about who opened the container, as its wording could be understood to identify Epimetheus rather than Pandora. The expression “Pandora’s box” subsequently came to describe an action that unexpectedly brings about numerous difficulties.