Myth Monday - Pandora's Box

Pandora (1861), by Pierre Owner: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

This past week a fair number of people searched my site for "Pandora's Box." While it was one of the stories I heard often as a kind of moral lesson for a preschooler, and it may be one students learn early in the school year, there is another reason for the popularity of the term. Television and to a lesser extent the news have been calling attention to the term. In a TV show called "Big Brother 14," a Pandora's box will be opened. My fellow fans of "Doctor Who" will remember the variation on the box known as the Pandorica. In the news, I found an article with the term in the title, Shakeel Afridi's interview to Fox opens Pandora's box.

For all you who don't know what the term "Pandora's Box" refers to, I'd like to suggest you read the story in one of the following forms:

• Hesiod's story, from Works and Days
• My retelling of the story of the jar/box/pithos
• Bulfinch's retelling of the story

Also see the supposed, fundamental difference between ancient Athenian males and females in Children of Athena (Review) that the story of Pandora illustrates.

Previous 2012 Myth Mondays:

1. Hercules Hurls His Guest
   
2. Scylla
   
3. Olympics Origins II: Myrtilos
   
4. Hercules the Giant-Killer
   
5. The First Tyrant
   
6. The King and the Harpies
   
7. The Dawn Goddess Loves a Mortal
   
8. Vediovis
   
9. Even a Boar Wishes to Kiss Adonis
   
10. Hero and Leander
    
11. Who Were the Argonauts?
    
12. The Chimera
    
13. Narcissus and Echo
    
14. How Perseus Fits In
    
15. Hesiod and the Bestiary
    
16. The First Olympics Origins I
    
17. Dionysus and the Return of Hephaestus
    
18. Zeus, the Recent Victor of the Titanomachy, Wins Once More in Hesiod's 'Theogony'
    
19. Atlas, the Titan Who Didn't Shrug
    
20. Troilus and ... Polyxena
    
21. Who Is the Virgo?