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Pandora
The titan Epimetheus ("hindsight") was responsible for giving a positive trait
to each and every animal. However, when it was time to give man a positive
trait, there was nothing left. Prometheus ("foresight"), his brother, felt
that because man was superior to all other animals, man should have a gift no
other animal possessed. So Prometheus set forth to steal fire from Zeus and
handed it over to man.
Zeus was enraged and decided to punish Prometheus and his creation: mankind.
To punish Prometheus, Zeus chained him in unbreakable fetters and set a
vulture over him to eat his liver each day. Prometheus was an immortal, so the
liver grew back every day, but he was still tormented daily from the pain.
To punish mankind, Zeus ordered the other gods to make Pandora as a poisoned
gift for man. Pandora was given several traits from the different gods:
Hephaestus molded her out of clay and gave her form; Aphrodite gave her
beauty; and Apollo gave her musical talent and a gift for healing. Hermes then
gave Pandora a box.
Before he was chained to the rock, Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to
take any gifts from the gods. Epimetheus did not listen to his brother,
however, and when Pandora arrived, he fell in love with her. Hermes told him
that Pandora was a gift to the titan from Zeus, and he warned Epimetheus to
not open the box, which was Pandora's dowry.
Until then, mankind had lived a life in a paradise without worry. Epimetheus
told Pandora never to open the box she had received from Zeus. However, one
day, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened it, releasing
all the misfortunes of mankind (plague, sorrow, poverty, crime, etc.). Once
opened, she shut it in time to keep one thing in the box: hope. The world
remained extremely bleak for an unspecified interval, until Pandora "chanced"
to revisit the box again, at which point Hope fluttered out. Thus, mankind
always has hope in times of evil.
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