A Dream Come True

4. Prometheus and Pandora

Prometheus and Pandora

“Wait, you mean Zeus gets overthrown too?” asked Yasmin.

“Not in any surviving myth,” Keisha replied. “The Greeks assumed the overthrow of Zeus would happen at some point in the future. However, he lived under the threat of overthrow, never knowing when it would happen or who would be involved.”

“Well, he did have one clue,” said Thanos. “He knew he would be overthrown by his own son.”

“That makes sense,” said Yong. “After all, he overthrew his father, and his father overthrew his grandfather.”

“Zeus had a lot of sons, though, didn’t he?” asked Mateo. “Oh, that’s why he doesn’t know who will bring him down.”

“Exactly,” agreed Keisha. “Well, at least he didn’t try to eat all his sons like Cronus did.”

“By all accounts, he was a better ruler, and many stories comment on his justice and wisdom,” said Thanos.

“His wisdom sometimes took a back seat, though,” Yong pointed out. “That’s how he had so many sons; if he saw a beautiful goddess or even a mortal woman, he seems to have been unable to avoid having s*x with her.”

“He was a guy,” said Patrick, as if all guys had s*x with everyone in sight.

“Womanizing aside, he generally seemed to govern well,” Thanos pointed out. “There was, however, one glaring exception in which he sounded a lot more like Cronus than himself: Prometheus.”

“Prometheus was one of the second-generation Titans, right?” asked Mateo.

“Yes,” said Keisha, “and because he was one of the gods who could foretell the future, he knew that Zeus would win and sided with him in the war between Zeus and Cronus.

“The problem was that Prometheus, who in some stories created the human race, disagreed with Zeus on how humans should be treated. Zeus wanted a larger portion of the sacrificial animals to be given to the gods than Prometheus thought was reasonable, so Prometheus met with Zeus at Mecone and offered a compromise that was really a trick involving two piles of ox meat that were not what they seemed.

“First, Prometheus took the animal’s bones and wrapped them in fat. Keep in mind ancient people didn’t know about the health risks of fat. To them it was the best part of the meat, so when Zeus saw the white fat glistening in the sun, it would have been appealing to him.

“Next, Prometheus took the ox’s stomach and stuffed all remaining meat into it. When he offered Zeus a choice, the king of the gods momentarily forgot his wisdom and quickly picked the fat, which in fact had nothing edible within it, rather than the meat-filled stomach.”

“I bet Zeus wasn’t happy when he realized the truth,” said Mateo.

“No, he was furious,” replied Thanos. “However, having already made his decision final, he couldn’t go back on it. Instead, he took his wrath out on human beings, refusing to give them fire. Prometheus, once again coming to the aid of the humans, stole fire and gave it to them despite Zeus’s command.

“Zeus was so enraged by Prometheus’s continued defiance that he punished him horribly.”

“Like Cronus did with his father?” asked Patrick, unconsciously crossing his legs.

“No,” said Thanos, “but in this case the punishment might have been even worse, because it was meant to last forever. Zeus ordered that Prometheus be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus. Then Zeus sent an eagle down to devour Prometheus’s liver. The enormous bird ate it completely every day, but Prometheus, being immortal, didn’t die. Instead, his liver grew back every night so that the eagle could eat it again the next day.”

“Zeus sounds like a total psycho,” said Yasmin. “Why do we have to read this stuff?”

“It’s true that by modern standards, what Zeus is portrayed as doing was terrible,” said Yong. “However, you have to keep in mind that a lot of these stories developed during very primitive times in a society whose morality was considerably different from our own. Hesiod can tell this story but still say that Zeus has everlasting wisdom.”

“Put yourself in the place of a king in primitive times,” suggested Keisha. “After all, kings and their war leaders were the first audience for a lot of Greek literature, like the epic poems of Homer. An ancient king would have little patience with someone who defied his orders; he would have seen that person as a danger to himself and to public order. The same king would be likely to see someone who defied the king of the gods as a threat to the whole universe.”

“I get that,” said Yasmin, “but that doesn’t answer my original question. Why do we have to read material that expresses all these primitive values?”

“That’s my question too,” added Patrick. Keisha doubted he’d ever have thought of that without Yasmin but decided against saying that.

“Even primitive stories can have a decent moral message,” Yong pointed out. “We can’t think of it just in terms of Zeus. Prometheus is a good example of someone being willing to take chances for others, a real hero. He suffers for his choice, but in no version of the story does he seem to regret making it. His example could inspire people to care more about others.

“Anyway, the fact that you read a piece of literature doesn’t mean you need to agree with its values. Questioning ideas you don’t agree with is an important part of developing your analytical thinking ability.”

“Greek values also evolved as time went on,” Thanos said. “Hesiod may side with Zeus—though even Hesiod refers to Prometheus as kindly—but Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound tells the story from Prometheus’s point of view and makes clear that Zeus is behaving like a tyrant. That supports Yong’s point that the stories can be read in several different ways.”

“As time went on, the Greeks were more and more likely to regard the myths as symbolic,” said Keisha. “For example, because the name Cronus is very similar to the Greek word for time, some writers argued that Cronus devouring his children was symbolic of the way time devours us all.

“OK, so the stories aren’t necessarily intended to glorify serial killers and dictators,” said Fatima. “I’m still not sure why it’s so important to read them.”

“Cultural literacy,” said Yong. “The Bible is the single biggest influence on Western culture, but Greek literature is certainly the second biggest. We can see its influence in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream—”

“Boring!” announced Patrick. Keisha was surprised it had taken him that long.

“Well, I want to hear the rest of Yong’s answer to my question,” said Yasmin, glaring at Patrick. Somewhat to Keisha’s surprise, he scowled but said nothing else.

“Another of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet, is ultimately based on Pyramus and Thisbe, an ancient Greek story, and Hecate appears as a character in Macbeth. That’s only a few of the possible examples. There is a long list of other authors we could cite, including Dante, Ariosto, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Pope, Shaw, Joyce, Hawthorne, T.S. Eliot, Updike—”

“You weren’t kidding when you said the list was long!” said Patrick. “But what do a lot of dead guys have to do with us?”

“It’s not just dead guys,” Mateo protested. “I read all of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books when I was in middle school. They’re based on Greek mythology. Actually, if you look at modern fantasy books, many of them have a mythological basis.”

“Fantasy books?” Patrick asked with a sneer on his face. “So if I don’t read fantasy, it’s all irrelevant to my life.”

“How about astronomy?” asked Yong. “All the planets and moons in our solar system are named after Greek gods, though often using their Roman names.”

“There was a god named Moon?” asked Patrick.

“No,” said Yong, who seemed to be struggling not to make a joke at Patrick’s expense. “Sun and moon are English equivalents. That reminds me that our names for days of the week have roots in Greek mythology too, though in switching from Greek to Latin to Norse and Old English, a lot of those connections got buried. One day, though, is still pretty close to its Roman form: Saturday, which was once the Latin equivalent of Saturn’s day—Cronus’s day to the Greeks.”

“All kinds of other words come from mythology as well,” said Keisha. “Like erotic comes from Eros, aphrodisiac from Aphrodite—”

“What?” asked Patrick, suddenly more attentive.

“I thought that would get your attention,” she said with a smile. “Mythological words and phrases are spread all through our language. Narcissist—”

“What’s that?” asked Patrick. Keisha thought that he, of all people, should have known.

“It’s a term for someone who has too big an ego and gets wrapped up in himself or herself. It comes from Narcissus, a handsome guy who cared only about himself and was cruel to everyone else. The goddess Nemesis punished him by causing him to fall in love with his own reflection.

“A lot of other psychological terms come from Greek myths. For example, Oedipus complex, comes from Oedipus, king of Thebes. Phobia comes from Phobos, or fear, the son of Ares.

“Of course, the influence of myths isn’t confined to psychology, either. As I said earlier, it pops up all over the place. Adonis, a term for a handsome young man, comes from the name of one of Aphrodite’s lovers. Herculean, an adjective to describe some epically difficult feat—”

“OK, OK,” said Patrick. “A lot of words come from mythology. I get it.”

“We could also mention mythology’s opera, the visual arts,

architecture—” began Thanos.

“Let’s not and say we did,” said Patrick quickly.

“USC Trojans!” said Mateo happily. “What kind of shoes are you wearing, by the way?” he asked Patrick.

“Nikes,” said Patrick. “Oh—”

“Yeah, oh,” said Keisha, who was getting more tired of him by the minute. However, realizing his shoes were named after a Greek goddess caused Patrick to stop and think—or, if not actually think, at least keep his mouth shut for a while.

“OK,” said Yasmin. “Now I really get it. There are a lot of things I’ll miss in other literature and art—and game-show questions—if I don’t know mythology.”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Yong.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got a question about what we were talking about earlier,” said Fatima.

“Ask away,” said Thanos. “I think we’re done.”

“All right then, how could an ancient Greek have called the king of the gods a tyrant the way Aeschylus did?” she asked. “Wouldn’t he have been afraid of being struck by lightning or something?”

“There are different theories on that,” said Thanos. “A lot of myths are stories about people being punished for disrespecting the gods, so clearly the Greeks thought it could happen. Writers do seem to have believed they enjoyed a certain amount of latitude. Aristophanes and other writers of Greek comedy even made fun of the gods—except Poseidon. He was notoriously bad tempered, so they left him alone.

“When people are punished in the myths, it’s usually because they did something overt, like Erysichthon chopping down Demeter’s sacred grove or Actaeon accidentally seeing Artemis naked. Sometimes it’s also long-term, like Hippolytus getting on Aphrodite’s nerves by rejecting love and only worshiping Artemis. I guess the ancient Greeks probably believed the offense had to be serious or prolonged to merit the attention of the gods.”

“That makes sense,” said Fatima.

“To get back to our original story, the wrath of Zeus didn’t end with torturing Prometheus. The king of the gods also wanted to punish the human race, so he had the other gods create the first woman, Pandora,” said Thanos.

“The first woman was intended as a punishment for men?” asked Yasmin, frowning.

“Let me finish the story first. then you can tear it apart if you want.

“Prometheus had made the first men, but Zeus obviously couldn’t ask him, so he turned to Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods, who molded Pandora from clay, making her a woman so beautiful even the gods were stunned by her.”

“How would he have known what a beautiful woman would look like if she was the first?” asked Mateo.

“He had the goddesses as models,” suggested Keisha.

“Probably,” agreed Thanos. “In any case, Hephaestus was not the only one who contributed to her development. Aphrodite gave her grace, to make her as alluring as possible. Athena taught her needlework, so she would seem useful outside the bedroom. Hermes gave her the power of speech, so she could communicate well, but he also gave her ‘a shameless mind and a deceitful nature,’ as Hesiod puts it.

“Beauty is only skin deep,” said Mateo. “Pandora was beautiful, but she wasn’t a good person.”

“Exactly,” said Thanos. “Zeus was ready to trick Prometheus’s brother, for whom Pandora was intended, in somewhat the same way Zeus had been tricked by Prometheus himself. Prometheus disguised the worse portion of the sacrifice to look more attractive. Zeus had the gods disguise a deceitful woman to be irresistible.

“Just to be sure, the beautiful woman was dressed magnificently. Athena gave her a gown the goddess had made herself. The Graces, attendants of Aphrodite, gave her a golden necklace. The Seasons crowned her with spring flowers. Then Pandora was ready for Epimetheus.”

“The poor guy never stood a chance,” said Yong.

Thanos nodded. “Prometheus had warned Epimetheus not to accept gifts from Zeus, but Epimetheus was not much of a thinker and wanted the beautiful woman for his wife as soon as he saw her. Also, the fact that Hermes presented her to him as a gift from Zeus made it seem undiplomatic to refuse.

“Zeus had given Pandora a jar—”

“I thought it was a box,” interrupted Yasmin.

“It is in some later stories,” agreed Thanos, “but in the earliest version, it’s a jar. Anyway, the jar was supposed to be a wedding gift. However, when Pandora opened it, diseases and other kinds of evils flew out of it to plague the human race. Only hope, also trapped in the jar, remained behind. That last part could mean that humans were left without hope, which was trapped in the jar, or it could mean that hope was preserved to comfort humans later.”

“So it’s a question of whether the jar is half empty or half full,” said Yasmin, smiling.

“Yeah,” said Yong, “the pessimist would see this as a myth in which there is no hope, but the optimist would see it as an example of how hope can help us survive anything.”

“I read this myth as a little kid,” said Yasmin, “but the details were different. Pandora wasn’t deceitful, just curious. She was told not to open the box but did so anyway.”

“The myth probably existed in several different versions,” said Thanos. “As far as I know, though, the curiosity part doesn’t appear in any early Greek version. I think that was an attempt to give the story a different message. Hesiod used it to support the idea that there is no way to avoid the will of Zeus, but later on, especially after the rise of Christianity, when Zeus was no longer worshiped, someone probably wanted to give the tale a message more relevant to a different audience.”

“Yeah, societies often adapt literature to their changing needs,” said Yong. “I’ve seen some of the episodes of that ‘90s show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and they’re a perfect example. The Hercules in the original myths was someone who slept with practically every woman he encountered, just like his father, Zeus. He had so many children that the sons of Hercules eventually formed an army.”

“Impressive!” said Patrick.

“Appalling!” countered Yasmin.

“Anyway, the Hercules character in the series didn’t believe in s*x outside of marriage. The original Hercules—Heracles in Greek—drank enough to dissolve the average human liver; the ‘90s Hercules never touched a drop. The original Hercules killed people, sometimes in war but sometimes with far less provocation. The ‘90s Hercules hardly ever killed anyone. The original Hercules had a fairly good relationship with the gods, except for Hera. The ‘90s Hercules was sort of a freedom fighter, standing up for humans against the gods on a pretty regular basis.”

“Like Perseus in the Clash of the Titans remake,” said Keisha. “He also fought the gods on behalf of humans and conformed better to modern morality than his mythic original.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying happened to the Pandora story over the years,” said Thanos. “People adapted it to fit new audiences.”

“What’s that?” asked Fatima. Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing and noticed that their foggy, unvarying surroundings, broken only by their “window” now had one other break in the monotony: a large jar, almost as high as some of them were tall, covered with Greek-style vase paintings.

“I wonder what’s inside,” said Patrick, striding over to it and grabbing the lid.

“Don’t!” commanded Keisha, who was worried about the obvious connection to the Pandora story. “We don’t know—”

She was too late. Patrick had already pulled the lid off.