Editing Pandora (section)

==Difficulties of interpretation==
Historic interpretations of the Pandora figure are rich enough to have offered Dora and [[Erwin Panofsky]] scope for monographic treatment.<ref>Panofsky 1956, see bibliography</ref> [[Martin Litchfield West|M. L. West]] writes that the story of Pandora and her jar is from a pre-Hesiodic myth, and that this explains the confusion and problems with Hesiod's version and its inconclusiveness.<ref name="West164">West 1978, pp.&nbsp;165&ndash;166.</ref> He writes that in earlier myths, Pandora was married to Prometheus, and cites the ancient Hesiodic ''[[Catalogue of Women]]'' as preserving this older tradition, and that the jar may have at one point contained only good things for humanity. He also writes that it may have been that Epimetheus and Pandora and their roles were transposed in the pre-Hesiodic myths, 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 the ''Bibliotheca'' that Prometheus created man from water and earth.<ref name="West164" /><ref>Apollodorus, ''Library and Epitome'', ed. Sir James George Frazer.</ref> Hesiod's myth of Pandora's jar, then, could be an amalgam of many variant early myths.

The meaning of Pandora's name, according to the myth provided in ''Works and Days'', is  "all-gifted". However, according to others, Pandora more properly means "all-giving".<ref>Adrian Room, ''Who's Who in Classical Mythology'', Random House 2003, p.229</ref> Certain vase paintings dated to the 5th century BCE likewise indicate that the pre-Hesiodic myth of the goddess Pandora endured for centuries after the time of Hesiod. An alternative name for Pandora attested on a [[White ground technique|white-ground]] [[Kylix (drinking cup)|kylix]] (ca. 460 BCE) is ''Anesidora'', which similarly means "she who sends up gifts." This vase painting clearly depicts Hephaestus and Athena putting the finishing touches on the first woman, as in the ''Theogony''. Written above this figure (a convention in Greek vase painting) is the name ''Anesidora''. More commonly, however, the epithet ''anesidora'' is applied to [[Gaia (mythology)|Gaea]] or [[Demeter]]. In view of such evidence, William E. Phipps has pointed out, "Classics scholars suggest that Hesiod reversed the meaning of the name of an earth goddess called Pandora (all-giving) or Anesidora (one-who-sends-up-gifts). Vase paintings and literary texts give evidence of Pandora as a mother earth figure who was worshipped by some Greeks. The main English commentary on ''Works and Days'' states that Hesiod shows no awareness [of this]."<ref name="Phipps1988" />

[[File:Pandora medal 1854.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Hermes carrying Pandora down from Mount Olympus, a medal based on a design by [[John Flaxman]]]]

[[Jane Ellen Harrison]]<ref>Harrison, ''Prolegomena'' 1922, pp 280–83.</ref> also turned to the repertory of vase-painters to shed light on aspects of myth that were left unaddressed or disguised in literature. On a fifth-century amphora in the [[Ashmolean Museum]] (her fig.71) the half-figure of Pandora emerges from the ground, her arms upraised in the epiphany gesture, to greet Epimetheus. A winged ''[[Keres (Greek mythology)|ker]]'' with a fillet hovers overhead: "Pandora rises from the earth; she ''is'' the Earth, giver of all gifts," Harrison observes. Over time this "all-giving" goddess somehow devolved into an "all-gifted" mortal woman. A.H. Smith,<ref>Smith, "The Making of Pandora" ''The [[Journal of Hellenic Studies]]'' '''11''' (1890, pp.&nbsp;278–283), p 283.</ref> however, noted that in Hesiod's account Athena and the Seasons brought wreaths of grass and spring flowers to Pandora, indicating that Hesiod was conscious of Pandora's original "all-giving" function. For Harrison, therefore, Hesiod's story provides "evidence of a shift from [[matriarchy]] to [[patriarchy]] in Greek culture. As the life-bringing goddess Pandora is eclipsed, the death-bringing human Pandora arises."<ref name="Phipps1988">{{Cite journal |last=Phipps |first= William Eugene |title=Eve and Pandora contrasted | journal = [[Theology Today]]| volume = 45| issue = 1| pages = 34–48| date = April 1988|publisher=[[Princeton Theological Seminary]] |doi= 10.1177/004057368804500104 |url=http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1988/v45-1-article3.htm |access-date=11 September 2023|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110108063409/http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1988/v45-1-article3.htm |archive-date=January 8, 2011 |url-access=subscription }}.</ref> Thus, Harrison concludes "in the patriarchal mythology of [[Hesiod]] her great figure is strangely changed and diminished. She is no longer Earth-Born, but the creature, the handiwork of Olympian Zeus." (Harrison 1922:284). [[Robert Graves]], quoting Harrison,<ref>Harrison, ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion'' (1903) 1922: 283–85 quoted in Graves, ''The Greek Myths'' (1955) 1960, sect.39.8 p.&nbsp;148.</ref> asserts of the Hesiodic episode that "Pandora is not a genuine myth, but an anti-feminist fable, probably of his own invention." [[H. J. Rose|H.J. Rose]] wrote that the myth of Pandora is decidedly more illiberal than that of epic in that it makes Pandora the origin of all of Man's woes with her being the exemplification of the bad wife.<ref>Cf. Rose, ''A Handbook of Greek Literature; From Homer to the Age of Lucian'', Chapter III, ''Hesiod and the Hesiodic Schools'', p.&nbsp;61. "Its attitude towards women is decidedly more illiberal than that of epic; a good wife is indeed the best prize a man can win (702), but a bad one is the greatest curse; generally speaking women are a snare and a temptation (373–5) and Pandora was the origin of all our woes".</ref>

The Hesiodic myth did not, however, completely obliterate the memory of the all-giving goddess Pandora. A scholium to line 971 of [[Aristophanes]]' ''[[The Birds (play)|The Birds]]'' mentions a cult "to Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life".<ref name=Hurwit171>Jeffrey M. Hurwit, "Beautiful Evil: Pandora and the Athena Parthenos" ''American Journal of Archaeology'' '''99'''.2 (April 1995: 171–186)</ref> And in fifth-century Athens, Pandora made a prominent appearance in what, at first, appears an unexpected context, in a marble relief or bronze appliqués as a frieze along the base of the ''[[Athena Parthenos]]'', the culminating experience on the [[Acropolis]].  Jeffrey M. Hurwit has interpreted her presence there as an "anti-Athena."  Both were motherless, and reinforced via opposite means the civic ideologies of [[patriarchy]] and the "highly gendered social and political realities of fifth-century Athens"<ref name=Hurwit171 />—Athena by rising above her sex to defend it, and Pandora by embodying the need for it. Meanwhile, [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] (i.24.7) merely noted the subject and moved on.