PANDORA (the " All-giving ")

This article appears in Volume V20, Page 675 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PANDORA (the " All-giving ") in

Greek

GREEK
GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

mythology, according to

Hesiod

HESIOD

(Theog. 570612) the first woman. After Prometheus had stolen fire from

heaven

HEAVEN (0. Eng. hefen, heofon, heofone; this word appears in O.S. hevan; the High. Ger. word appears in Ger. Himmel, Dutch hemel; there does not seem to be any connexion between the two words, and the ultimate derivation of the word is unknown; the sugges

and bestowed it upon mortals Zeus determined to counteract this blessing. He accordingly commissioned

Hephaestus

HEPHAESTUS

to fashion a woman out of earth, upon whom the gods bestowed their choicest gifts.

Hephaestus

HEPHAESTUS

gave her a human voice, Aphrodite beauty and

powers

POWERS, HIRAM (1805-1873)

of seduction,

Hermes

HERMES
HERMES, GEORG (1775-1831)

cunning and the art of flattery. Zeus gave her a jar (sri0os), the so-called " Pandora's box " (see below), containing all kinds of misery and evil, and sent her, thus equipped, to Epimetheus, who, forgetting the warning of his brother Prometheus to accept no present from Zeus, made her' his wife. Pandora afterwards opened the jar, from which all manner of evils flew out over the earth (for parallels in other countries, see Frazer's Pausanias, ii. 320).

Hope

HOPE, ANTHONY
HOPE, THOMAS (c. 1770-1831)

alone remained at the bottom, the lid having been shut down before she escaped. (

Hesiod

HESIOD

, W. and D. 54105). According to a later story, the jar contained, not evils, but blessings, which would have been preserved for the human race, had they not been lost through the opening of the jar out of curiosity by man himself (Babrius, Fab. 58).
See J. E.

Harrison

, " Pandora's Box," in

Journal

JOURNAL
JOURNAL (through Fr. from late Lat. diurnalis, daily)

of Hellenic Studies, xx. (1900), in which the opening of the jar is explained asan aetiological myth based on the Athenian festival of the Pithoigia (

part

PART

of the Anthesteria, q.v.), and P. Gardner, " A new Pandora vase " (xxi., ibid., 1901). Pandora is only another form of the Earth goddess, who is conceived as releasing evil spirits from the lriOol, which served the purpose of a grave (cf. the removal of the lapis manalis from the mundus, a circular pit at Rome supposed to be the opening to the world below, on three days in the year, whereby an opportunity of revisiting earth was afforded the dead). See also O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie (1906), i. 94.

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