what was in pandoras box ?

Answer 1

It's actually Pandora's jar but everyone gets that wrong.
Here's the long version:

The myth according to Hesiod
The titan Epimetheus ("hindsight") was responsible for giving a positive trait to each and every animal. However, when it was time to give man a positive trait, there was nothing left. Prometheus ("foresight"), his brother, felt that because man was superior to all other animals, man should have a gift no other animal possessed. So Prometheus set forth to steal fire from Zeus and handed it over to man.

Zeus was enraged and decided to punish Prometheus and his creation: mankind. To punish Prometheus, Zeus chained him in unbreakable fetters and set an eagle over him to eat his liver each day, as the eagle is Zeus's sacred animal. Prometheus was an immortal, so the liver grew back every day, but he was still tormented daily from the pain, until he was freed by Heracles during The Twelve Labours.(another reason for Prometheus' torment was because he knew which of Zeus' wife would bear a child who would eventually overthrow Zeus. Zeus commanded that Prometheus reveal the name of the mother, but Prometheus refused, instead choosing to suffer the punishment).

To punish mankind, Zeus ordered the other gods to make Pandora as a poisoned gift for man. Pandora was given several traits from the different gods: Hephaestus molded her out of clay and gave her form; Athena clothed her and the Charites adorned her with necklaces made by Hephaestus; AphroditeЉ gave her beauty; Apollo gave her musical talent and a gift for healing; Demeter taught her to tend a garden; Poseidon gave her a pearl necklace and the ability to never drown; Zeus made her idle, mischievous, and foolish; Hera gave her curiosity; Hermes gave her cunning, boldness and charm. Thus the name Pandora—"all gifts"—in Hesiod's version derives from the fact that she received gifts from all deities.


Pandora by John William Waterhouse, 1896The most significant of these gifts, however, was a pithos or storage jar,[1] given to Pandora either by Hermes or Zeus. Before he was chained to the rock, Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to take any gifts from the gods. Epimetheus did not listen to his brother, however, and when Pandora arrived, he fell in love with her. Hermes told him that Pandora was a gift to the titan from Zeus, and he warned Epimetheus not to open the jar, which was Pandora's dowry.

Pandora was created to ruin mankind.

Until then, mankind had lived a life in a paradise without worry. Epimetheus told Pandora never to open the jar she had received from Zeus. However, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and she opened it, releasing all the misfortunes of mankind (plague, sorrow, poverty, crime, despair, greed, vice, old age, sickness, insanity, spite, passion, famine, etc.). Once opened, she shut it in time to keep one thing in the jar: hope 1. The world remained extremely bleak for an unspecified interval, until Pandora "chanced" to revisit the box again, at which point Hope fluttered out. Thus, mankind always has hope in times of evil.

In another, more philosophical version of the myth, hope (Elpis) is considered the worst of the potential evils, because it is equated with terrifying foreknowledge. By preventing hope from escaping the jar, Pandora in a sense saves the world from the worst damage.

The daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora was Pyrrha, who married Deucalion and was one of the two who survived the deluge.

The story of Pandora's Box can be interpreted in more than one way, but is often thought to be a version of "curiosity killed the cat".

Most scholars 2 contend that Pandora's "box" is a mistranslation, and her "box" may have been a large jar or vase, forged from the earth, perhaps because of similarities in shape between a jar and a woman's uterus 4. There is also evidence 3 to suggest that Pandora herself was the "jar".

The mistranslation is usually attributed to the 16th Century Humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam when he translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora. Hesiod uses the word "pithos" which refers to a jar used to store grain. It is possible that Erasmus confused "pithos" with "pyxis" which means box. The scholar M.L. West, has written that Erasmus may have mixed up the story of Pandora with the story found elsewhere of a box which was opened by Psyche 5.

The original Greek text from 700 BC of Hesiod's Works and Days, whence we get the earliest extant story of Pandora and the jar, does not specify exactly what was in the box Pandora opened. 7

The scholar M.L. West has written that the story of Pandora and her jar is from a pre-Hesiodic story or legend and this is what causes the confusion and problems with Hesiod's version and its inconclusiveness. He writes that in earlier legends, Pandora was married to Prometheus, and cites the ancient Catalogue of Women as preserving this older tradition, and that the jar may have at one point contained only good things for mankind. He also writes that it may have been that Epimetheus and Pandora and their roles were transposed in the pre-Hesiodic stories and legends, a mythic inversion. He remarks that there is a curious correlation between Pandora being made out of earth in Hesiod's story, to what is in Apollodorus that Prometheus created man from water and earth. (Apollodorus, Library and Epitome, ed. Sir James George Frazer.[2] ) 8

Martin P. Nilsson writes that the part about Hope being left in the box was likely added later: a sequel to the original legend. 9

Some interpret the tale of Pandora's Box to show that Early Greeks imagined woman to be created by the Gods as evil on the inside and beautiful on the outside in order to make men miserable. Various feminist scholars believe that in an earlier set of myths, Pandora was the Great Goddess, provider of the gifts that made life and culture possible, and that Hesiod's tale can be seen as part of a propaganda campaign to demote her from her previously revered status. For an alternate view of Pandora, see Charlene Spretnak's Lost Goddesses of Early Greece; A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Mythology, 1978. For an alternate view of goddesses in general, and stories such as those of Eve and Pandora regarding women and evil, see Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman. The resemblence to Eve, the first woman in christian "mythology" is slightly disconcerting. Possibly the similarities have something to do with the aggresive shift away from matricarchy, a defining feature of Indo-European invasion in Neolithic Europe.

The presence of Hope in a jar full of evils for mankind raises questions about whether Hope is a comfort for the evil mankind experiences, or whether the hope for something better must be interpreted as the damnation of mankind. According to Hesiod hope implies the control of the future, and since no one can control the future, to have hope is to be deluded 6. Others think that Hope being left in the box symbolizes Hope as often being humanity's only comfort.

Answer 2

Most people only understand half of the mythology of pandora's box. Pandora was given a box by the God's to keep and protect, she was told never to open the box. Curiousity overwhelmes her and she opened the box, good fortune hence came forth and out came love, but as a balance for such a powerful force diseases, starvation, plagues and poverty also seeped forth.

Answer 3

JaneB is correct, but she left out that Pandora also had the clap.

Answer 4

that is the whole theory of pandoras box evil mythology

Answer 5

All the Evil in the world.

When Pandora opened it, evil ruled the world for one thousand years.

If you found it, best to just leave it alone.

Answer 6

All the bad things that could be unleashed onto the world if it was opened, it was opened and what was left in the box was hope.

Answer 7

mythology says all the disease & suffering were in a box that was not to be opened, pandora didn't listen.

Answer 8

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Answer 9

all the sins. zeus was mad so he created a wife (can't remember the guy's name).
inside was war, jealously, dispare, greed, can't remember the other 3 top of my head. 7 deadly sins i believe. o and hope was in there too

Answer 10

All the sufferings of mankind. It's bad.

Answer 11

There was something that you should never want to know.....something wicked .....all the sins and unpleasant desires in the world