Pandora and Aristophanes

CC 303 Intro to Classical Mythology - Fall 2009
University of Texas at Austin, Prof. Lawrence Kim

Names to Remember

Pandora, Cupid and Psyche, Aristophanes, Prometheus
Epimetheus, Hephaestus/Vulcan

Lecture Outline

1. Pandora in Hesiod’s Works and Days, or, Why Life is Hard
   1. Pan-dora = All-Gift or All-Giver
   2. Punishment for Prometheus’ Theft of Fire
   • No mention of tricking Zeus at the sacrifice
   3. Created by Hephaestus and all the other gods (All-Gift)
   • Face like a goddess; figure like a beautiful maiden
   • But “a bitchy mind and a cheating heart”
   1. Epimetheus received her, despite warnings from Prometheus
   2. Pandora's Jar
   • Before, life was easy, no work, pain, or disease
   • Pandora opens jar and released all the evils of life
   • Only Hope was left in the jar
   • Ambiguity of meaning
   • Is Hope also an evil? Or something good?
   • What does it mean that it is still in the jar?
2. Pandora in Hesiod’s Theogony
   1. A “lovely evil”; “The sheer deception, irresistible to men”
   • No jar, or spreading evils in this version
   2. From her are descended all women, “a curse for men”
   • A necessary evil; another way in which life is hard
3. Pandora’s Symbolic Qualities in Hesiod
• Pandora is artificial, fabricated, and deceptive
• Beautiful outside, evil inside; like fat covering the bones
  
• Fritz Lang, dir. (1927) Metropolis: the robot Maria
• Pandora represents the dangers of female sexuality
• G.W. Pabst, dir. (1929) Pandora’s Box: Lulu
• The Femme Fatale
  
• Pandora's Box
• Becomes a small box in the 1500s by association with the myth of Psyche
• The forbidden, mysterious space; symbol of genitalia?
4. The Curiosity Theme in Other Narrative Traditions
1. NOT in Hesiod’s versions of the Pandora story
2. Adam and Eve, Genesis 2-3 [Read a translation (New International Version): BibleGateway.com]
3. Apuleius, Cupid and Psyche [Read an abridged version: SurLaLune Fairy Tales]
4. Bluebeard [Read one version of the tale at: SurLaLune Fairy Tales]
5. Beauty and the Beast

1. Aristophanes' Speech in Plato's Symposium
   1. The Origin of Love
   2. The Origin of Love, from John Cameron Mitchell, dir. (2001) Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Info at imdb.com)
   • Watch the video on YouTube

Images

1. Mercury Descending with Pandora, John Flaxman 1805.
2. Pandora, Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1878, Museum of Liverpool.
3. Pandora, J.W. Waterhouse 1896. Private Collection.
4. Psyche Opening the Golden Box, J.W. Waterhouse 1903. Private Collection.
5. Psyche Carried to Heaven, Asriaen de Vries. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
6. Eva Prima Pandora, Jean Cousin, Musée du Louvre, Paris.