About Pandora

In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek: Πανδώρα) was the first woman. Each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create her as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, and all the gods joined in offering her seductive gifts. Her other name, inscribed against her figure on a white-ground kylix in the British Museum (illustration, right), is Anesidora, "she who sends up gifts" According to the myth, Pandora opened a jar (pithos) in modern accounts referred to as "Pandora's box", releasing all the evils of mankind— greed, vanity, slander, envy, pining— leaving only hope inside once she had closed it again.

The myth of Pandora is very old, appears in several distinct Greek versions, and has been interpreted in many ways. In all literary versions, however, the myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world. In the seventh century BC Hesiod, both in his Theogony (briefly, without naming Pandora outright, line 570) and in Works and Days, gives the earliest literary version of the Pandora story.