PANDORA OR the CREATION of a GREEK EVE Where Do We

CHAPTER TWO

PANDORA OR THE CREATION OF A GREEK EVE

Where do we come from? Modern man is not the only culture to frequently pose this eternally fascinating question. The Greeks too had pondered the problem. In fact, they came up with rather different answers. Humankind could derive from ants, rocks, trees or earth.1 These are perhaps the older solutions to the problem of man’s origin, since they do not presuppose a specifi c geographical location. A younger solution located the fi rst man or men in one’s own hometown. The church father Hippolytus has handed down a number of such Greek Urmänner: Boeotian Alalkomeneus, Arcadian Pelasgos, Eleusinian Dys- aules, Lemnian Kabiros, Pallenean Alkyoneus, the Cretan Kouretes and the Phrygian Korybantes.2 These human ancestors clearly do not derive from comparable traditions: Pelasgos cannot be separated from the Pelasgoi, the people supposedly living in Greece before the actual Greeks;3 Alalkomeneus must have been the eponymous ancestor of the Boeotian town of Alalkomenai,4 and the Kouretes, Korybantes and Kabiros point to a background in initiation rituals.5 Yet, despite these differences, they have one thing in common: they are limited to a specifi c location or people and they are all male. So, what about the fi rst females? Did Greek tradition have nothing at all to tell about them? This is certainly not the case. When in the second century AD the traveller Pausanias visited the Parthenon, on the plinth of Athena’s

1 Od. 19.163; Hes. Cat. 205, 234; Asius fr. 8; PMG Adesp. 985; West on Hes. Th. 35, 187, 563 and Op. 145; Kassel and Austin on Pherekrates, Myrmekanthropoi; C. López Ruiz, “El dicho del árbol y la piedra. Sabiduría ancestral y árboles sagrados en Grecia arcaica y el Levante,” in R. Olmos et al. (eds.), Paraíso cerrado, jardín abierto (Madrid, 2005) 103–24; M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007) 375f. 2 Hippol. Ref. 5.7.3–7 ~ PMG Adesp. 985, cf. M. Luginbühl, Menschenschöpfungsmythen. Ein Vergleich zwischen Griechenland und dem Alten Testament (Berne, 1992) 136–43. 3 K. Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology (London and New York, 1989) 82–83; Luginbühl, Menschenschöpfungsmythen, 111–2; R.L. Fowler, “Pelasgians,” in E. Csapo and M. Miller (eds.), Poetry, Theory, Praxis (Oxford, 2003) 2–18. 4 See also Steph. Byz. α 191 with Billerbeck; schol. Il. IV.8; Et. Magnum 546. 5 See F. Graf, “Zwischen Autochthonie und Immigration: die Herkunft von Völ- kern in der alten Welt,” in D. Clemens and T. Schabert (eds.), Anfänge (Munich, 1998) 65–93 at 82f. 20 chapter two statue he saw carved “the birth of Pandora. Hesiod and others say that Pandora was the ﬁ rst woman ever born, and the female sex did not exist before her birth” (1.24.7).6 It is interesting that Pausanias refers by name only to Hesiod. And indeed, whenever later Greek authors refer to the source of the myth of Pandora, they only mention Hesiod.7 Evidently, this was the canonical version. In recent years the place of the episode within its larger Hesiodic contexts has repeatedly been analysed and its socio-economic implications stressed,8 but there is still room for some additional observations. We will therefore start our analysis with Hesiod’s narration (§ 1),9 continue with later literary, iconographical and philosophical representations (§ 2) look at the genealogical aspects (§ 3), and end with a few conclusions (§ 4).

1. Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days

As the title of Hesiod’s Theogony suggests, this poem, which it is perhaps safe to date from about 700 BC, begins with an account of the

6 For differing suggestions regarding the meaning of Pandora in this context see L. Berczelly, “Pandora and the Panathenaia. The Pandora Myth and the Sculptural Decoration of the Parthenon,” Acta Arch. Artium Hist. 7 (1992) 53–86; J.M. Hurwit, “Beautiful evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos,” Am. J. Arch. 99 (1995) 171–86 and his The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles (Cambridge, 2004) 235–45; O. Palagia, “Meaning and Narrative Techniques in Statue-Bases of the Pheidian Circle,” in N.K. Rutter and B.A. Sparkes (eds.), Word and Image in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh 2000), 53–78 at 60–62. R. Osborne, “Representing Pandora,” Omnibus 37 (1999) 13–4 intriguingly suggests that Pheidias was perhaps inspired by a kalyx krater of the Niobid painter, where on the fi rst register Pandora stands almost in the center, facing front; see for this krater also E. Reeder (ed.), Pandora (Baltimore, 1995) 282–4; F. Lissarrague, “Le fabrique de Pandora: naissance d’images,” in J.-C. Schmitt (ed.), Ève et Pandora (Paris, 2001) 39–67 at 43f. 7 Tert. Cor. 7.3; Or. C.Celsum 4.36; Eus. PE. 13.13.23, 14.26.13; Suda π 2472; Eust. on Il. XIV.175–86, XVI.175. 8 Contexts: J.-P. Vernant, “À la table des hommes,” in M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, La cuisine du sacrifi ce en pays grec (Paris, 1979) 37–132; F.I. Zeitlin, Playing the Other (Chicago, 1996) 53–86 = (abbreviated and adapted) “Signifying difference: the myth of Pandora,” in R. Hawley and B. Levick (eds.), Women in Antiquity: new assessments (London and New York, 1995) 58–74; V. Pirenne-Delforge, “Prairie d’Aphrodite et jardin de Pandore. Le “féminin” dans la Théogonie,” Kernos, Suppl. 11 (2001) 83–99; C. Calame, Masks of authority: fi ction and pragmatics in ancient Greek poetics (Ithaca, 2005) 47–52. Socio-economic implications: F.I. Zeitlin, “The Economics of Hesiod’s Pandora,” in Reeder, Pandora, 49–56, whose equivalence of Pandora’s jar with the uterus is unpersuasive. 9 For translations and observations I am much indebted to the standard commentaries of M.L. West, Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford, 1966) and Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford, 1978); W.J. Verdenius, A Commentary on Hesiod Work and Days, vv. 1–382 (Leiden, 1985).