Things You Would Never Know

Pandora's Box

The Greek myth about Pandora's Box is a pretty well known story, but for those who don't know, here goes: Prometheus stole fire from Zeus to give to man. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock on the highest mountain and an eagle was to peck out his liver every single day, only for it to grow back so it could be ripped out again the following day. This sentence was infinite. But Zeus was so angry, that he created woman. The first woman was to be Pandora. She was beautiful, charismatic, intelligent and most of all "curious" as the kinder version of the myth tells us. Zeus presented Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. Epimetheus just so happens to have a jar (NOT A BOX) that contains all the evils in the world such as death, disease, and crime. Epimetheus tells Pandora never to open this jar, under any circumstances, but being the curious creature she is, she does. And so she is from then on known as the Mother of all evils.

Sounds a bit similar to the biblical story of Adam and Eve doesn't it? Only this story predates Christian variations. I won't delve any further into this part of the subject.

But, getting back to the interesting fact of the day... Pandora's box was actually a jar. The story had been mistranslated by some old fart, yes I am too tired to look his name back up today. Anyway, in the Greek version the word pithos is actually a jar. Jars were used back then as burial jars, water jugs and wine jugs. They were always half buried, half visible in the ground so that it could maintain a lower temperature and preserve the contents of the jar.

Pandora's Box has a better ring to it though than Pandora's Jar, wouldn't you say? Perhaps it wasn't a mistranslation as it was more of a bit of a "tweak" to the story.

Those are the interesting facts of the day!