Pandora was a gift of the gods, created by Hephaestes and delivered to Epimetheus by Hermes. She was called Pandora because she was made from the various contributions of the god to be a punishment for man. The story appears in Hesiod's Works and Days and Theogony and is often compared to the Creation Myth in Genesis. All ills and human maladies of the world are credited to her, but so is Hope.
In the beginning... nearly everyone knows the creation story from Genesis regarding Adam and Eve and the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve blamed her transgression on the Snake and Adam blamed his on Eve. Protestant theology generally blames Eve for the4 downfall of men from the divine state of perfection and corruption of the soul to being evil in their interpretation of Original Sin while Catholic teaching follows Jewish belief that man is born with a pure soul, but through making choices contrary to God's will becomes corrupted by sin. The view on women as harbingers of evil and misery is radically contrasted.
However, Pandora appears in Hesiod's Works and Days:
[55] you are glad that you have outwitted me and stolen fire--a great plague to you yourself and to men that shall be. But I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction." So said the father of men and gods, and laughed aloud. Pandora
[60] And he bade famous Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of human kind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape, like to the immortal goddesses in face; and Athena to teach her needlework and the weaving of the varied web;
[65] and golden Aphrodite to shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs. And he charged Hermes the guide, the Slayer of Argus, to put in her a shameless mind and a deceitful nature. So he ordered. And they obeyed the lord Zeus the son of Cronos.
translation by Frazier
Sacred Text: Hesiod Works and Days
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/i...
transl EvelynWhite
Hesiod lived in the 8th century BCE just after Homer. Many of the myths that appear later, particularly in Ovid's metamorphoses, originated through his works, The Works and Days and The Theogony. The books were written as moral texts to chastise his good-for-nothing brother while he was an industrious Boeotian farmer, toiling the soil for hsi daily stone soup.
