Pandora's box

Pandora's box is an artefact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's c. 700 B.C. poem Works and Days. Hesiod related that curiosity led her to open a container left in the care of her husband, thus releasing curses upon mankind. Later depictions of the story have been varied, with some literary and artistic treatments focusing more on the contents than on Pandora herself.
The container mentioned in the original account was actually a large storage jar, but the word was later mistranslated. In modern times an idiom has grown from the story meaning "Any source of great and unexpected troubles", or alternatively "A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse".

In mythology

According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope, though it could also have the pessimistic meaning of "deceptive expectation".

Modern usage

From this story has grown the idiom "to open a Pandora's box", meaning to do or start something that will cause many unforeseen problems. A modern, more colloquial equivalent is "to open a can of worms".

Etymology of the "box"

The word translated as "box" was actually a large jar in Greek. Pithoi were used for storage of wine, oil, grain or other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying, from which it was believed souls escaped and necessarily returned. Many scholars see a close analogy between Pandora herself, who was made from clay, and the clay jar which dispenses evils.
The mistranslation of pithos is usually attributed to the 16th-century humanist Erasmus who, in his Latin account of the story of Pandora, changed the Greek pithos to pyxis, meaning "box". The context in which the story appeared was Erasmus' collection of proverbs, the Adagia, in illustration of the Latin saying Malo accepto stultus sapit. In his version the box is opened by Epimetheus, whose name means 'Afterthought' – or as Hesiod comments, "he whom mistakes made wise".

Different versions of the container

There were alternative accounts of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon humanity in Greek myth, of which a very early account is related in Homer's Iliad:

On the floor of Jove's palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.

In a major departure from Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara states that

Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men's judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognise the rules of conduct or acts of piety.

The poem seems to hint at a myth in which the jar contained blessings rather than evils. It is confirmed in the new era by an Aesopic fable recorded by Babrius, in which the gods send the jar containing blessings to humans. Rather than a named female, it was a generic "foolish man" who opened the jar out of curiosity and let them escape. Once the lid was replaced, only hope remained, "promising that she will bestow on each of us the good things that have gone away." This aetiological version is numbered 312 in the Perry Index.
In the Renaissance, the story of the jar was revisited by two immensely influential writers, Andrea Alciato in his Emblemata and the Neo-Latin poet Gabriele Faerno in his collection of a hundred fables. Alciato only alluded to the story while depicting the goddess Hope seated on a jar in which, she declares, "I alone stayed behind at home when evils fluttered all around, as the revered muse of the old poet has told you". Faerno's short poem also addressed the origin of hope but in this case it is the remainder of the "universal blessings" that have escaped: "Of all good things that mortals lack, / Hope in the soul alone stays back."
An idea of the nature of the blessings lost is given in a Renaissance engraving by Giulio Bonasone, where the culprit is Pandora's husband, Epimetheus. He is shown holding the lid of a huge storage jar from which female representations of the Roman virtues are flying up into the air. They are identified by their names in Latin: security, harmony, fairness, mercy, freedom, happiness, peace, worth and joy. Hope is delayed on the lip and holds aloft the flower that is her attribute.

Difficulties of interpretation

In Hesiodic scholarship, the interpretive crux has endured: Is the hope imprisoned within a jar full of evils to be considered a benefit for humanity, or a further curse? A number of mythology textbooks echo the sentiments of M. L. West: " is comforting, and we are to be thankful for this antidote to our present ills." Some scholars such as Mark Griffith, however, take the opposite view: " seems to be a blessing withheld from men so that their life should be the more dreary and depressing." The interpretation hangs on two related questions: First, how is elpis to be rendered, the Greek word usually translated as "hope"? Second, does the jar preserve elpis for people, or keep it away from them?
As with most ancient Greek words, elpis can be translated in a number of ways. A number of scholars prefer the neutral translation of "expectation". Classical authors use the word elpis to mean "expectation of bad", as well as "expectation of good". Statistical analysis demonstrates that the latter sense appears five times more than the former in all of extant ancient Greek literature. Others hold the minority view that elpis should be rendered "expectation of evil".
The answer to the first question largely depends on the answer to the second one: should the jar be interpreted as a prison, or a pantry? The jar certainly serves as a prison for the evils that Pandora released – they only affect humanity once outside the jar. Some have argued that logic dictates, therefore, that the jar acts as a prison for elpis as well, withholding it from the human race. If elpis means expectant hope, then the myth's tone is pessimistic: All the evils in the world were scattered from Pandora's jar, while the one potentially mitigating force, hope, remains locked securely inside. A less pessimistic interpretation understands the myth to say: countless evils fled Pandora's jar and plague human existence; the hope that humanity might be able to master these evils remains imprisoned inside the jar. Life is not hopeless, but human beings are hopelessly human.
It is also argued that hope was simply one of the evils in the jar, the false kind of hope, and was no good for humanity, since, later in the poem, Hesiod writes that hope is empty and no good and makes humanity lazy by taking away their industriousness, making them prone to evil.
In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."
An objection to the "hope is good / the jar is a prison" interpretation counters that, if the jar is full of evils, then what is expectant hope – a blessing – doing among them? This objection leads some to render elpis as the expectation of evil, which would make the myth's tone somewhat optimistic: although mankind is troubled by all the evils in the world, at least it is spared the continual expectation of evil, which would make life unbearable.
The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. Elpis takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be absurd to represent either the presence of ills by their confinement in a jar or the presence of hope by its escape from one." Hope is thus preserved as a benefit for humans.

Fixing the blame

Neither Alciato nor Faerno had named who was responsible for opening the jar beyond saying it was a "mortal". During the Renaissance, it is the name of Epimetheus that is mentioned as often as not, as in the engraving by Bonasone noticed above and the mention of Pandora's partner in a rondeau that Isaac de Benserade took it on himself to insert into his light-hearted version of the Metamorphoses – although Ovid had not in fact written about it himself.

::In a jar an odious treasure is
The etching by Sébastien Le Clerc that accompanied the poem in the book shows Pandora and Epimetheus seated on either side of a jar from which clouds of smoke emerge, carrying up the escaping evils. The lid of the jar is quite plainly in Epimetheus' hand. Paolo Farinati, an earlier Venetian artist, was also responsible for a print which laid the blame on Epimetheus, depicting him as lifting the lid from the jar that Pandora is holding. Out of it boils a cloud which carries up a man and a dragon; between them they support a scroll reading "sero nimirum sapere caepit", in reference to the meaning of Epimetheus' name in Greek.
Another Venetian print, ascribed to Marco Angelo del Moro, is much more enigmatic. Usually titled "Pandora's Box, or The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit", it portrays a woman in an antique dress opening an ornate coffer from which spills books, manuscripts, snakes and bats. By Pandora's side is a woman carrying a burning brand, while a horned figure flees in the opposite direction. Above is a curved vault painted with signs of the zodiac to which the sun-god Apollo is pointing, while opposite him another figure falls through the stars. Commentators ascribe different meanings to these symbols as contradictory as the contents of the chest. In one reading, the hand Pandora holds up to her face makes her the figure of Ignorance. Alternatively her eyes are protected because she is dazzled and the snakes crawling from the chest are ancient symbols of wisdom. Apollo, seated above, points to Aquarius, the zodiacal sign of January/February, which marks the "Ascent of the Sun" from the trough of winter. The falling figure opposite him may be identified either as Lucifer or as night fleeing before the dawn; in either case, the darkness of ignorance is about to be dispelled. The question remains whether the box thus opened will in the end be recognised as a blessing; whether the ambiguous nature of knowledge is either to help or to hurt.
In later centuries the emphasis in art has generally been on the person of Pandora. With few exceptions, the box has appeared merely as her attribute. René Magritte's street scene of 1951, however, one of the few modern paintings to carry the title "Pandora's Box", is as enigmatic as were the Renaissance allegorical prints.