Monday, January 11, 2010

Re: Pandora's box

After reading Sara Q's post I knew I had to post a reply. Mainly because I'm a fan of Greek mythology even though its been a while since I've picked up the old Greek myth book.

First, a history lesson. Or a mythology lesson. Well, a history lesson about the mythology. Pandora comes into play during the early phase of Greek myth when the world is newly made. It goes like this, in the early days man was like any other beast. Then along came Prometheus. Now Prometheus was a big old titan with an even bigger heart. He saw that these humans had potential for being much better than they were. So he taught them a lot of stuff like math, science, agriculture, medicine and writing. Clearly, Prometheus was a great guy. But there was one thing that man didn't have. Fire. So Prometheus sneaked into mount Olympus while Zeus was off partying with the other gods and goddesses, grabbed the fire and gifted it to mankind, thus ending the stone age.
Jacob Jordaens, Der gefesselte Prometheus, um 1640Image via Wikipedia

Now when Zeus woke up the next morning he was shocked to see smoke coming from the land below. He was angry. Fire was his toy and he didn't want to share. So the first thing he did was to chain that meanie Prometheus to the rocks at Caucasus where a giant eagle would come and eat his liver which grew back the next day just in time for the eagles next meal.  Ouch.

Even after that was done Zeus wasn't happy so he ordered Hephaestus to fashion Pandora out of clay, gave her the box and married her off to Epimetheus, who happened to be the brother of Prometheus. The rest is as my co-author put it. Lesson over.

Secondly, this myth was made a long time ago, VERY long. So long in fact that the first known record of it, Hesiods "Theogeny" is considered a retelling. Back in those days, women were viewed in a different light.

I was originally going to get in this long talk about feminism and how men also have their fair share of negative phrases associated with them, but that is a long discussion, one for which I don't have the strength right now. I will admit that in Greek myth women are not normally given strong roles, but writing off the Greeks as totally anti-feminist would be a bit too hasty. There are numerous strong female characters in the mythology. My favorite is Athena the goddess of wisdom, war and justice (wisdom, how cool is that?). She got a whole city named in her honor (Athens anyone?). Then there is Hera, Zeus's wife who holds the honor of being the only god(dess) that Zeus was afraid of. How can you forget the Amazons? A tribe of women warriors more ferocious than any man. And then there's Atlanta, a hunter better than any other trained by the goddess Artemis herself, another strong female character.

I hope I haven't opened up another Pandora's box here.

Talha A. B.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments:

Post a Comment