Pandora's Box Pandora.  Her name means "All Gifts".  Zeus had her made by Hephaestus to punish the human race, to give them 'beautiful evil', after Prometheus had just given it fire.  Pandora was designed in the images of the goddesses, and she was the first woman in a world of men.  She was a gift to Epimetheus to be his wife.  So, all the other gods and goddesses came forth to give her gifts to take with her as wedding gifts.  Athene, the goddess of wisdom, gave her life.  Aphrodite gave her beauty, Hermes gave her cunning, and she was also given other special gifts like grace, d3exterity, cogency, and so on.  But Hepaestus gave her lying and deceit.  Finally, she was presented to Epimetheus.  He had been warned by Prometheus never to accept a gift from zeus, but he loved her so and forgot his promise to his brother.  She brought with her a covered earthen vessel, which she was forbidden to open.  She didn't know what was inside, and oh how she tried to resist the temptation.  She promised to obey the wrning, and oh how she tried.  See, she had been given too much curiosity. One morning, she could resist the temptation no longer.   It seemed to call out to her.  She didn't know the trouble it would cause.  She slowly lifted the lid to see what was inside.  And out swarmed all the calamities of mankind, like cruelty, poverty, anger, sicknesss, despair, sadness, natural disasters, premature baldness, and so on.  Before that no such things existed.  There was no death, but it was like a long sleep with no suffering.  We might assume there was no hell.  No sin.

When all these things were flying out of the box, she pushed on the lid witha ll of her might to try and close the box before it was too late.  Finally, she got it shut and cried for all the things to come back, but they did not.  She ws dreadfully sorry.  No one really knows who put those things in the box.  But we do know that there was only one good thing in there.  And because of Pandora's efforts to right her wrong, we still have that one good thing.  Hope It has been debated whether Pandora had a box or a jar or a barrel, etc.  The point is that women as portrayed in ancient art are forever putting things tidily away in boxes of various kinds.  True even in the myth of Danae, where she and her son Perseus were themselves tidied awayin a box and dumped at sea.  Perhaps the idea of the box is symbolic of womens' life in Athens.  A woman was seen as a container, herself (for child), who spent most of her life in a container (house) for the purpose of allowing no unauthorized person to open the box, until she was carried out in another box. the mythical story of Pandora is sometimes compared to the true story of Eve in the Bible because they both caused rather unfortunate things to happen.  Maybe Eve is the reason that women have been portrayed throughtout histor and literature as "evil beauty" who controls men through her appetites in bed and at the table:  she can make them both feeble and poor.  This idea is reflected in the poetry of Hesoid. "Don't let a woman, wiggling her behind, And fflattering and coaxing, take you in; She wants your barn:  woman is just a cheat."