The Poet Hesiod: Prometheus and Pandora

Another Greek poet who wrote before 700 BCE was Hesiod (Hesiodus). With an increase in contacts between various parts of Greece, knowledge of Hesiod's work spread, as did knowledge of Homer's writing, arousing interest in the mythical past. According to the British classics scholar M.L. West, Hesiod describes himself as having become a poet "through instruction from the Muses themselves as he tended his lambs, or his fathers lambs on the mountain slopes." Hesiod wanted to put the story of his ancestors into a credible whole. This meant drawing from and reworking stories that had been told orally, with ingredients that scholars in modern times can trace to Babylonian origins. Hesiod, according to West, expressed it as the Muses "telling him to sing of the of the family of immortals." The Greeks, at any rate, viewed Hesiod's writing, like the writings of Homer, as divinely inspired and Hesiod as an instrument of the gods.

In his epic poem the Theogony Hesiod describes the origins of the world and of the gods Gaia, Chaos and Eros. Gaia was a mother goddess that was earth itself. According to Hesiod:

Gaia, the beautiful, rose up, born of Chaos. She was broad bosomed and the base of all things. And fair Gaia bore the starry heavens, equal to herself, covering her on all sides and home forever for the gods.

Eros was a god of passion and eroticism. Hesiod wrote that Eros was,

... the fairest of the deathless gods; he unstrings the limbs and subdues both mind and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men.

According to Hesiod, the god Kronus descended from Gaia and the primordial god Uranus, and Zeus was the son of Kronus, who ruled as lord until overthrown by his son Zeus, who dwells in the highest of mansions, on Mount Olympus -- the Greeks like others seeing mountain highs as mysterious and divine places. Zeus was another father of gods, the "King in Heaven" and a father of men, "far the highest of the gods, and the greatest in power," who received from his father, Kronus, thunder and lightning. In Works and Days, Hesiod writes of Zeus making the strong and as oppressing the strong, diminishing the conspicuous and magnifying the inconspicuous, as making the crooked straight and withering the proud.

The gods were the givers of blessings. Hesiod describes the Greeks as having descended from a golden race that lived in idle luxury before Zeus was Lord, when Zeus' father Kronus was king. Writes Hesiod:

Men then lived like gods, with carefree heart, without toil and misery. Neither did old age affect them... They enjoyed themselves in feasting, beyond all illness, and they died as if overcome by sleep. All good things were theirs. The grain-giving soil bore its fruits in unstinted plenty, while at their leisure and in contentment they harvested their fields amid abundance.

This golden race of men descended to a lesser breed, punished by Zeus, who was angry that they did not offer honor to the gods who occupied Mount Olympus, and angy for their not having sacrificed on the sacred altars of the blessed gods. Then, according to Hesiod, mankind descended further.

Zeus summoned his subordinate gods to a conference at his heavenly palace. The gods traveled across the Milky Way, and at his palace with Zeus they decided to destroy humankind and to provide the earth with a new race of mortals more worthy of life and more reverent to them. Zeus feared that the destruction of humankind by fire might set heaven itself aflame, so he called for assistance from a god of the sea, and man was instead swept away by a great flood.

To further explain the fall of men, Hesiod writes of the god Prometheus. Like the Hindu god Agne, Prometheus was a god of fire, and he was a god interested in the welfare of mankind. Hesiod describes Prometheus as stealing fire from the heavens and giving it to mankind. This theft angered Zeus, and Zeus had Prometheus chained to a rock high in the Caucasus Mountains (between the Black and Caspian Seas) where an eagle or vulture tore at his liver each day, Zeus causing the liver of Prometheus to grow anew each night in preparation for the next day's torture.

And as punishment for accepting the fire stolen from the heavens, Zeus sent man a curse in the form of woman. Her name was Pandora. Zeus sent her with a magic storage jar (pithos) that he forbade her to open. But after she had been on earth awhile she grew curious and opened the jar, and out came the earthly plagues and misfortunes that forever after harmed humankind. Pandora hurriedly put the lid back on, but all that remained inside was hope.

Hesiod continues about Pandora:

From her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmate in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.

In real life, Greek men and law treated women as property, but Hesiod had something else to complain about man's misbehavior. Hesiod writes of men ceasing to respect their ageing parents, treating them with harsh words and not likely to repay their parents for their nurture in ignorance of the gods' punishments. He writes of war, the sacking of towns and men honoring miscreants. "Decency and Moral Disapproval will go to join the family of the immortals, abandoning mankind; those grim woes will remain or mortal men, and there will be no help against evil."

However depraved humankind, Hesiod writes of rules for them to keep to stay on the right side of the gods, among them,

Never pour a libation of sparkling wine to Zeus after dawn with unwashed hands, nor to others of the deathless gods (proper purification rituals) else they do not hear your prayers but spit them back.

Don't make water (urinate) while standing upright facing the sun, but remember to do this when he (Zeus) has set towards his rising.

The Poet Hesiod, Prometheus and Pandora