Pandora [Greek Mythology]

 

But man was a desolate creature living on the earth alone, and with no other occupation than fighting each other and subduing the wild beasts that roamed up and down the earth.

And the gods looked down from Mt. Olympus upon him and pitied him that he had, after all, so little to make him really happy and to lift his thoughts heavenward.

“He has no love in his heart,” said one god, sadly.

“He does not know the meaning of gentleness,” said another.

“He knows no heroism except that of brute strength against a foe,”, said another.

“He thinks only of self,” said another.

“There is,” said Zeus, “but one way to lift his thoughts towards Olympus; but one way to arouse in his heart love and tenderness and true heroism ; and that is to give him something to love, something to protect. Even the brutes of the forest have their young, and so are happier than man.”

Then spoke the wise and loving Athene, “Let us send down to earth a woman who shall be to man a goddess, and who shall refine his nature and make to grow in his sleeping heart those qualities that shall make him god-like and brave and true.”

To this great Zeus bowed assent; and happy in the task before them, the gods set themselves to work, and every god and goddess vied each with the other to make some glorious gift to her.

One gave her a tender loving heart that could do no cruelty even to a worm of the earth; another gave her a beautiful form and ' a face from which the light of Apollo always shone; one gave her a love of music and beauty; another a love of home and of little children; and when, at last, the beautiful Pandora was brought before Zeus, his stern face grew tender; and, rising from his golden throne, he placed his hand upon her shining head, and there was added unto her beauty and gentleness a reverence henceforth for all that was pure and high and god-like in the earth or in Olympus.

Then Iris spread her beautiful arch across the sky; and hand in hand the messenger of Hera and the loving-hearted Pandora passed out from Olympus, down the shining bridge of color, to the abode of man.

And when Pandora stood before Prometheus and the people he had made, there fell

a hush upon man’s war-like spirit; and there sprang up in his heart the tenderness and love and protection of the weak that made man forever more a being above the brute, and tending always towards the god-like.

But it was the will of Zeus that sorrow ' should come into man’s world; and so it was Pandora who, as time went on, lifted the lid from the chest in which lay her parting gifts of the gods — joy, happiness, health, success, comfort, prosperity — and alas, they all escaped — all except hope. That, Pandora saved; and so it is that while all other blessings come and go, leaving the heart of man sometimes sad and heavy, hope never fails, but abides eternal, upholding, and encouraging to new endeavor, even the most heavily laden life.