Beholding Pandora's Jar

Two of Hesiod's poems, the Theogony and Works and Days collectively provide some answers to the question “Why are humans not gods?” They reveal a chronology of the separation between gods and men; at the beginning of the Theogony narrative, they stand side-by-side, and by the end of Works and Days their estrangement is sealed with the gods' gift of women.[1] This discussion will examine how this parting-of-ways is realised. To do this, it will first explore the nature of Hesiod's works, followed by an overview of what his main characters bring to the narrative. This provides a good backdrop for understanding the three main steps in the story. It then tries to conclude by suggesting what can be gleaned from a synthesis of these perspectives.

Hesiod's chronicle is complex and often ambiguous, in both content and form. The Theogony and Works and Days, even though they ultimately provide us a neat picture of their two main mythical figures, Prometheus and Pandora, they can not be understood in sequence. The former poem alludes to events described in the latter, and vice versa.[2] In a way that itself reveals the character of the relationship between gods and men, the story's logic is similarly circular: the Titan brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus, in expressing qualities we can immediately recognise as complementary facets of human nature, each take steps that bring about an unintended downfall of humans from the standing of gods to some rung above beasts.[3] In other words, humans are not so much distinct from gods due to their nature, but because (some of) the gods say so.

Such control exercised (and order created) by Zeus and his allies sets in contrast the uncertainty of human life and the perfect chaos of beastly existence. Hesiod creates this contrast through Prometheus' two – ultimately failed - challenges to Zeus, with Prometheus taking the role not of primal combatant seeking blood but of intelligent trickster trying to outwit. He first hucksters, presenting Zeus with a choice between undesirable bones covered with appetising fat or tasty morsels wrapped in an unsavoury stomach. He then steals fire for humans in response to Zeus hiding it from them. The difference between these successive challenges reflect the declining stature of man. Why, after all, would those on par with gods need Prometheus to represent them? The nature of his representation changes from mimicing human intelligence, to defending human livelihood.

While the reason for Zeus' punishing humans rather than the (apparently) guilty trickster Prometheus is absent from the Theogony, Works and Days suggests a possibility:

“You stole the fire and tricked me, happily,
You, plague on all mankind and on yourself.”[4] [emphasis mine]

The only clear way to reconcile the idea that the defense of human life could be a plague would be to find the presumptious use of intelligence to hoodwink an inordinately more abhorrent example to set. Recalling the words of another poet, Fulke Greville:

“Oh wearisome condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound,
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound” [emphasis mine] [5]

This is somewhat consistent with Zeus later punishing Prometheus for enabling man's use of fire, for again allowing humans to break that “law” to which they are bound.

Zeus has no qualms about using the same tactics in his defense of the (however demoted) human condition. Hesiod expresses this through the motif of the gift. Gifts – by their nature – are dangerous when accepted without questioning the benefits of this to the giver, or the possible harms to the recipient. The harms to those receiving gifts vary: they can be intrinsically harmful (or of little-to-no benefit, such as the bones covered in fat) and/or they can play in to the feeling of social pressure to reciprocate, which is the perfect cloak for later exploitation.[6]

Both Titans Prometheus and Epimetheus fail – after the initial huckstering by Prometheus – in the cause of representing humanity; a failure which in itself endorses the hierarchy created by Zeus. The mere fact that they are not human makes them doomed to fail, regardless of their individual qualities. For Epimetheus, this means allowing Zeus to complete a cycle of reciprocation by uncritically accepting the “all-gifted/all-giver” Pandora on behalf of humanity.[7] While this probably serves to etiologically justify human reciprocation, another (incompatible) interpretation would suggest that since the gift arises from a rage of retribution rather than  a sense of social responsibility and compassion, that this is yet another form of successful deceit chartering the gods' supremacy. Whatever the case – and for the sake of the story's internal consistency between elements of the narrative, it makes sense to prefer the etiological at the expense of precise expression – we know that each step in Hesiod's tripartite creation story was inspired by originally separate tales, and combining them would have been justified so to strengthen either interpretation.

Epimetheus' dim-witted mistake leads to the third and final stage in the separation of humans from the gods. As with the first two stages – Zeus's reaction to Prometheus' part in the sacrifice ritual, then his reaction to his stealing of fire – the third stage is still more punishment for challenging what later morphs in to the “Great Chain of Being”: Zeus introduces women to the human community. Hesiod's chronicle is notably more ambiguous on the position of women – relative to men – in the hierarchy. Unsurprisingly, all mention of  (or reference to) Pandora and her descendants characterise (unruly) instruments of men – who either marry in to an ambivalent future or are forgotten by the narrative – rather than fully independent agents. Still, they are very much human, with outward qualities of (and – in delicious irony, just like men - gifts from) the divine:

“... to make a face
Like an immortal goddess, and to shape
The lovely figure of a virgin girl.
Athene was to teach the girl to weave,
And golden Aphrodite to pour charm ...” [8]

And inward resemblance to beasts:

“... Zeus ordered, then,
The killer of Argos, Hermes, to put in
Sly manners, and the morals of a bitch.” [9]

Naturally alluding both to the human nature divided between Prometheus and Epimetheus, and the motif of deceptive appearances, familiar from the Theogony's sacrifice ritual using fat and the theft of fire via fennel stalk.[10]

Zeus' two punishments suggest a god who is either indecisive or capricious. His first punishment is to hide fire, treating men as animals, the antithesis of the divine; his second punishment – after Prometheus lifts their stature with the theft of fire – is to further boost their place in the hierarchy by introducing marriage. Fire and women, in other words, are Hesiod's civilising influences, and Zeus flip-flops like a politician between hiding and gifting them. They both require – again noting the demeaning treatment – constant 'upkeep' to remain bright, healthy, and yield (cultural or biological) offspring.

Resolving the apparent contradiction between the idea of nurturing 'civilising influences' and Zeus' acts of punishment that recur through the narrative neatly captures an answer to the question considered at the beginning of this discussion: “Why are humans not gods?” While humans lose and acquire 'civilising influences' throughout the story, their lives are at every step becoming more turbulent and uncertain, even as they are distanced from animals. As erratic as the behaviour of gods may be, power is insulation from – and omnipotence immunity to – uncertainty. Animals, as suggested earlier, are the perfect embodiment of chaos. Yet chaos without awareness leaves certainty irrelevant. As humans gain the Promethean fire, combined with their dependence on cooked food, the investment it demands must entail further (conscious) submission to the whims of nature. The arrival of Pandora and her jar leave this 'nature' still more punishing:

“... scattered pains and evils among men …
Thousands of troubles, wandering the earth.
The earth is full of evils, and the sea.
Diseases come to visit men by day
And, uninvited, come again at night
Bringing their pains in silence ...” [11]

The “Hope” that remained is the final quality distinguishing man from animal, but really it is just the flip-side of uncertainty. It is just as irrelevant to gods, and just as inconcievable to animals.











Bibliography

Greville, F., 1st Baron Brooke. (2012, May 22). Wikiquote, . Retrieved 04:31, September 2, 2013 from http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Fulke_Greville,_1st_Baron_Brooke&oldid=1446761.

Nagy, J. F. (1981) Deceptive gift in Greek mythology. Arethusa, 14, 191-204.

Powell, B. B. (2012) Classical Myth, 7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Vernant, J. P. (1979). The myth of Prometheus in Hesiod. In Myth and society in ancient Greece (J. Lloyd, Trans.) Brighton: Harvester Press.

________________
[1]        Vernant, J.P. The myth of Prometheus in Hesiod.
[2]        Ibid.
[3]        Ibid.
[4]        All translations of Hesiod are from O'Brian & Major; 55-56.
[5]        Greville, F.
[6]        Nagy, J. F. Deceptive gift in Greek mythology.
[7]        Powell, B. B. Classical Myth p. 128
[8]        Works & Days, 63-66
[9]        Works & Days, 69-70
[10]        Vernant, J. P.
[11]        Works & Days, 94-103