There are some who say that the original creator of mankind was Prometheus, that he fashioned the first man in the image of the gods, using clay and water taken from Panopeus in Phocis. Prometheus was a Titan, one of the race of giants who fought an unsuccessful war against Zeus and the other gods -- and it is certainly true that he was a great deal wiser than his brothers.
For he alone knew that the war was doomed to failure. He realized that, huge and immensely strong though the Titans undoubtedly were, they also suffered from a common trait among giants. They just weren’t very bright. A Titan might tear up a mountain instead of going around it, but he would probably find out later on that he was going the wrong way anyhow. A Titan might be able to hurl a rock the size of Gibraltar a hundred miles or more, but he would invariably miss whatever he was aiming for.
On the other hand, of course, the gods were as quick-witted as they were skilled in the art of war. First there was Zeus, the king of Olympus, armed with his devastating thunderbolts. Then there was Poseidon with his trident, Apollo with his golden arrows, the invisible Hermes . . . it was an invincible army, and Prometheus could see that his brothers could see that his brothers would most certainly lose against it.
Lose was what they did. Most of them were sent to a dark and damp prison in the depths of Tartarus. Perhaps the most famous Titan of all -- Atlas -- was condemned to hold up the heavens on his shoulders for all time. But Prometheus, who had let everyone know that he was neutral from the very start, got away scot-free. That was when he created man.
Prometheus loved men in the same way people love their pets. He was immensely proud of everything they did, boasted about them to almost anyone who would listen, and generally fussed over them in every way possible. Instead of feeding them with food, however, he fed them knowledge -- scraps of information that he picked up from Athena, the goddess of wisdom and his only real friend in Olympus. One day she would tell him about mathematics and straight away he would rush down to earth to pass it on. The next day it might be art or architecture, the day after that science or engineering. It’s strange to think that our entire civilization could have been handed down to us rather in the manner of dog biscuits, but that is how it was.
As the years passed and mankind became more intelligent, Zeus, who had been watching all this from his celestial throne, grew uneasy.
“I am a little worried about these human beings,” he remarked to his wife, Hera, one day over a goblet of wine.
“What about them?” asked Hera.
“Well, I just wonder if they’re not getting a bit above themselves. Where will it all lead to? That’s what I want to know. Today the rudiments of geometry, tomorrow it could be genetic surgery.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. But I’m keeping my eye on them!”
Zeus might have been a jealous god, but he was not cruel enough to destroy the newly formed human race. And so mankind continued to flourish. Things came to a head, however, one day in a place called Sicyon. The trouble was caused by a question of ownership.
Prometheus had taught man to stay on the right side of the gods by regularly sacrificing the best animals from their herds. A special sacrificial bull had been chosen for Zeus at Sicyon, but the question was, which part should be reserved for the god and which parts should the men (who had worked hard to raise the animal in the first place) be allowed to keep? As usual, Prometheus acted as the mediator in the dispute, but, unwisely, he decided to play a trick on Zeus.
When the bull had been killed and cut up, he took two sacks. Into one of these he put all the most succulent portions of meat -- the rump and the fillet, the sirloin and the rib -- but concealed them beneath the stomach-bag which was all white and rubbery and generally disgusting to look at. Into the other went the bones and the gristle, the eyeballs and the hooves . . . in short all the most unappetizing parts of the bull. But these were covered with a layer of fat to make them look as delicious as possible.
Then Prometheus took both sacks and knelt before Zeus.
“Oh, mighty king!” he said. “Why should there be any quarrel between you and the little pink creatures who inhabit the world below? Take this matter of sacrifice. It seems that nobody can decide who should get exactly what. Well, as you are the king of Olympus, why don’t you choose for yourself? I have divided the bull between these two sacks. Which one do you want?”
Zeus, who had never suspected that a Titan could think up such a scheme, was completely deceived. He chose the bones and the fat, and ever since that time the gods have received nothing else from the sacrifice. When he found out how Prometheus had tricked him, however, he was furious.
“Man may have his steak,” he thundered. “But he will eat it raw!”
And with those words, he reached out with one hand and snatched all the fire from the world.
It seemed that mankind had gotten the worst deal after all. Without fire they could take no pleasure in their food and once the sun had gone down, they could only stay indoors, huddled under animal skins for warmth. But Prometheus was willing to do anything to help his creation, and one day, while Zeus was out having one of his many affairs, he stole up to Olympus. For he still had one friend in the home of the gods: Athena. Hearing him knocking on a side door, the goddess of wisdom unbolted it and let him in. Then Prometheus rode up to the sun and, using his bare hands, broke off a blazing firebrand. This he carried back to earth, thrusting it into a giant fennel leaf. And in this way people were once again able to enjoy their meat grilled.
But this time Prometheus had gone too far. When Zeus heard how he had been defied for a second time, his anger knew no bounds.
“Prometheus!” he cried. “You crossed me once and I forgave you because of your loyalty to me in the war of the Titans. But this time there can be no forgiveness. This time you must pay for your crime.
And so saying, he seized Prometheus and chained him to a pillar on the freezing slopes of the Caucasian mountains. But if this was not punishment enough, worse was to come. Every morning a huge vulture landed on the wretched Titan’s chest and, even as Prometheus screamed in rage and horror, tore out his liver and devoured it. And every night, while Prometheus shivered in the sub-zero temperatures, his liver grew whole again. In this way the horrible torture could be repeated again and again until the end of time.
Zeus punished mankind, too. But as man had only offended indirectly, his punishment was of another sort.
First he visited the crippled god Hephaestus who worked at a great forge in Olympus with twenty bellows pumping twenty-four hours a day. Although ugly and misshapen himself, no blacksmith was more skilled than Hephaestus.
“I want you to make me a woman,” the king of the gods commanded. (Until then there had been only men on earth.) “She must be irresistibly beautiful. She must be perfect. As perfect as a goddess.”
Hephaestus did as he was told. He had only ever disobeyed Zeus once. That had been just before he became the crippled god. Now he fashioned a woman out of clay, molding her perfect features with his own hands. He commissioned the four winds to breathe life into her and asked all the goddesses to help dress her in their finest clothes and jewels.
The result was Pandora, the first woman.
When Zeus saw the blacksmith god’s work, he was well pleased and instructed Hermes to carry her into the world at once. There she was married to a certain King Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus and the only other Titan who had not joined in the war against the gods.
Now Epimetheus had been warned never to trust the gifts of Zeus but, seeing the terrible fate that had befallen his brother, he was too afraid to refuse. Moreover, he had to admit that Pandora was beautiful. You’d have had to be mad to think otherwise. When she walked into the room, men fell silent and all eyes turned on her. Whatever she said, people would agree. When she made jokes, the laughter would continue for several minutes. Whatever she did was greeted with applause. And Epimetheus did feel rather proud to be married to her.
Unfortunately, the things Pandora said were never really worth listening to, for she was not a very intelligent creature. Her jokes were in truth extremely unfunny. She did very little because she was impossibly lazy and if Epimetheus was glad to be her husband, she made him a poor and unfaithful wife. For this was the revenge of Zeus. He had made her as shallow and as coquettish as she was beautiful. And she was to cause more trouble to mankind than anyone could have imagined possible.
For Epimetheus owned a large, ebony box which was kept in a special room in his palace, guarded day and night. In this box he had collected and imprisoned all the things that could harm mankind. It was the one room in the palace that Pandora was forbidden to enter, and naturally it was the one room that most aroused her curiosity.
“I bet you keep all sorts of super things in that big black box of yours,” she would say in her syrupy voice. “Why don’t you let your little Pandy look inside?”
“It is not for you, my dear,” Epimetheus would reply. “You should leave well alone.”
“But . . .”
“No, no, my love. No one may open the box.”
“Then you don’t love me,” Pandora would say, crossing her arms and pouting. “And I’m not going to love you anymore -- not ever!”
They had this conversation many times until the day when Pandora couldn’t resist her curiosity any longer. For despite everything Epimetheus had told her about the box, she still believed that it contained some special treat that he was holding back from her.
“I’ll show him . . . the old bossy-boots,” she muttered to herself.
Waiting until Epimetheus was out, she managed to talk her way past the guards and into the room. She had stolen the key from beside his bed and nobody thought to stop her. Was she not, after all, the king’s wife and the mistress of the house? Her whole body trembling, she knelt down beside the box. It was smaller and older than she had expected. It was also a little surprising (not to say upsetting) that the padlock which fastened it should be in the shape of a human skull. But she was certain it would contain treasure such as would make all her own diamonds and pearls seem like mere pebbles, treasure that would make her the envy of the world. She turned the key and opened the box . . .
And at once all the spites and problems that Epimetheus had for so long kept locked up exploded into the world. Old age, hard work, sickness . . . they flew out in a great cloud of buzzing, stinging, biting insects. It was as if Pandora had accidentally split the atom. One moment she was standing there with a foolish grin on her face. The next she was screaming in the heart of an intense darkness that had, in seconds, stripped her of her beauty and brought out on her skin a thousand boils.
At that moment, all the things that make like difficult today, streamed out of Pandora’s box and into the world:
Old age, hard work, sickness, vice, anger, envy, lust, covetousness, spite, sarcasm, cynicism, violence, intolerance, injustice, infidelity, famine, drought, pestilence, war, religious persecution, pollution, unemployment, racism, sexism, terrorism, vandalism, paranoia, schizophrenia, kleptomania, claustrophobia, hypochondria, insomnia, selfishness, bribery, corruption, gluttony, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, nicotine, insanity, and much, much more.
At the last moment, Epimetheus managed to slam down the lid, but it was too late.
One good thing had been released among all the evils, though: HOPE. Which is just as well. For with all the problems that Pandora had released into the world, where would we be without HOPE?