Sometimes we say "Pandora's Box" must have been opened because we have so many troubles! Here's the first story of what happened. There will be a second version, just as there was about Cleopatra.
*********After Zeus condemned Prometheus for giving fire to man, he began to plan how to punish man for accepting it.
Finally he had an idea. He ordered the smith and artist of the gods, Hephaestus, to mold a girl out of clay. Aphrodite was to pose as model for it, to make sure it would be beautiful.
Zeus breathed life into the clay figure, which turned to flesh and lay sleeping. Then he summoned all the gods and asked each of them to give her a gift.
Appollo taught her to sing and play the lyre. Aphrodite taught her to look at a man without moving her eyes, and to dance without moving her legs. Poseidon gave her a pearl necklace and promised she would never drown. Finally, Hermes gave her a gold box. He told her she must never open it. Then Hera gave her curiousity.
Hermes took her by the hand and led her down from Mount Olympus to the brother of Prometheus, whose name was Epimetheus. He said "Father Zeus grieves at the disgrace that has come to your family. To show you that he holds you blameless he gives you this gift, the fairest girl in all the world. She is to be your wife. Her name is Pandaora, the all-gifted."
So the two were married. Pandora spun, baked, tended her garden and played the lyre and danced for her husband. She thought she was the happiest young bride in the world. The only thing that bothered her was the golden box.
First she kept it on a table and polished it every day so that everybody would admire it. The sunlight shone through the window and twinkled on the box and it seemed as though it were winking at her.
She thought: "Hermes must have been teasing. He's always making jokes. Everyone knows that. Yes, he was teasing me when he told me never to open his gift. If it is so beautiful outside, what will it be like inside? I think he hid a surprise for me there! Probably jewels more lovely than have ever been seen. Since the box is so rich, the gifts inside must be even more so, because that is the way it is done with gifts. Maybe Hermes is WAITING for me to open the box and see what is inside, and to thank him. Maybe he thinks I am ungrateful...."
Even as she was thinking this she knew it it wasn't true. The box was not to be opened! She had to keep her promise.
Finally she took the box and hid it in a dusty little storeroom where she wouldn't see it winking at her. It seemed to be burning in the shadows, and its heat seemed to scorch her thoughts wherever she went. She kept passing the room, going in, and making excuses to linger there awhile. Sometimes she took the box down from its hiding place and stroked it. Then she quickly shoved it away again and rushed out of the room.
She decided to lock it in a heavy oak chest, put great chains on the chest and dig a hole in her garden. She put the chest in and covered it well with earth. Then she used all her might to roll a heavy boulder on top of it. When her husband came home that night her hair was wild, her hands were bloody, and her tunic was stained and torn, but all she would say was that she had been working in the garden.
That night the moonlight blazed into the room. She couldn't sleep. She sat up in bed and looked around. The whole room was filled with moonlight. Everything seemed different. There were dark shadows and swaths of silver all mixed together and all moving. She rose quickly from bed and tiptoed out of the room. She went into the garden. Flowers were blowing, trees were swaying and rustling and the whole world seemed to dance in the brilliant moonlight.
She walked to the rock and pushed it with her toe, and it rolled away like a pebble. She felt full of wild strength. She took a shovel and dug down to the chest, unchained the locks and took out the golden box. It was very cold. The coldness seemed to burn her hands to the bone. She shook it. What was inside the box seemed to her to be the secret of life which she must see, or die.
She took the little golden key from her tunic pocket and fitted it into the lock, then gently opened the lid. There was a swarming, a hot throbbing and a wild meaty rustling, and a stinking smell. Out of the box as she held it up in the moonlight swarmed little, scaly, lizardlike creatures with wings like bats and burning red eyes. They flew out of the box and circled her head once, clapping their wings and screaming thin, high little mocking screams, and then they flew cackling and hissing off into the night.
Pandora almost fainted. She sank to her knees. With her last bit of strength she slammed the lid shut and caught the last little monster half in and half out before it could wriggle free. It shrieked and spat and clawed at her hands, but she managed to push it back into the box and locked it in. Then she dropped the box, and fainted.
What were those horrible, deathly little creatures that flew off into the night from the golden box? They were all the troubles that beset humans. They were the thousands of shapes of diseases, famine, insanity and spitefulness, and all their foul kin. They scattered into the night and flew into every home and hid in the rafters, waiting. When their time comes they fly and sting, bringing pain, sorrow, and death.
Things could have been much worse, even if you find that hard to believe. The one that Pandora caught in the box was the most dangerous of all. It was called Foreboding, which is the final spite. If it had managed to get free everyone in the world would have been told exactly what misfortune was going to happen every day of life. There would have been no hope, and so there would have been an end to humans, because although we can bear endless troubles, we can't live without hope.
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