88 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
The theme of the first woman as the bringer of evil is particularly fraught
with social, political, and moral implications. The most obvious interpretation
of Hesiod is that Pandora was the first woman (like Eve in the Bible) and re-
sponsible for evil. Thus for the Greeks the world, before Pandora, was popu-
lated only by men—an extremely difficult concept. Did Prometheus create only
men out of clay? Hesiod's account is riddled with irreconcilable contradictions
because various stories have been awkwardly but poetically conflated. In the
myth of the Ages of Mankind both men and women are created by Zeus or the
gods, and both men and women are held responsible for evil, for which they
are punished by the gods. Should we assume that Pandora was sent with her
jar of evils (and Hope) to a happy humankind? At any rate, amidst all this con-
fusion, Hesiod is more accurately condemned as a misanthropist, rather than
only as a misogynist.
Details in the story of Pandora are disturbing in their tantalizing ambiguity.
What is Hope doing in the jar along with countless evils? If it is a good, it is a
curious inclusion. If it too is an evil, why is it stopped at the rim? What then is
its precise nature, whether a blessing or a curse? Is Hope the one thing that en-
ables human beings to survive the terrors of this life and inspires them with lofty
ambition? Yet is it also by its very character delusive and blind, luring them on
to prolong their misery? It is tempting to see in Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound
an interpretation and elaboration: human beings were without hope until
Prometheus gave it to them along with the benefit of fire. The hope Prometheus
bestows on mortals is both blind and a blessing. The pertinent dialogue between
Prometheus and the chorus of Oceanids runs as follows (248-252):f
PROMETHEUS: I stopped mortals from foreseeing their fate.
CHORUS: What sort of remedy did you find for this plague?
PROMETHEUS: I planted in them blind hopes.
CHORUS: This was a great advantage that you gave mortals.
PROMETHEUS: And besides I gave them fire.
Fundamental to both Hesiod and Aeschylus is the conception of Zeus as the
oppressor of humankind and Prometheus as its benefactor. In Aeschylus the
clash of divine wills echoes triumphantly through the ages. His portrait, more
than any other, offers the towering image of Prometheus as the Titan, the bringer
of fire, the vehement and weariless champion against oppression, the mighty
symbol for art, literature, and music of all time.AESCHYLUS' PROMETHEUS BOUND
Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound begins with Strength (Kratos) and Force (Bia),
brutish servants of an autocratic Zeus, having brought Prometheus to the re-
mote and uninhabited land of Scythia. Hephaestus accompanies them. Kratos
urges the reluctant Hephaestus to obey the commands of Father Zeus and bind
Prometheus in bonds of steel and pin him with a stake through his chest to the