So the heroes lived and died as playthings of the gods. The greater the hero, the greater his suffering. Heracles was tormented by fits of madness that led him to kill his own children; Achilles and countless others died young in wartime agony; those who survived Troy lost sons and brothers, and returned to find families torn apart. Generation after generation, the curses afflicting the noble houses of Mycenae and Thebes created men with monstrous minds, weaving evil schemes against their own kin. Banishment from home and family, hard travel, uncertainty, wounds, the frequent prospect of imminent death—these, not just their human or inhuman opponents, are the obstacles that heroes face and strive to overcome. Heroes must be better than themselves, and prevail against the most powerful natural and supernatural forces the gods hurl against them. But many do not return. In truth, life is a vale of tears.
Why should it be like this? Why are we born, only to suffer and die? All things are the gods’ doing, and this is no exception. When Prometheus ensured the survival and continuation of the human race by stealing fire from heaven, he knew the consequences. He was a Titan, one of the old gods. He knew that his human wards would be punished and tormented no less savagely than he, but he still saw this as the preferable course. He knew the obstacles and difficulties that the gods would place in the way of human life—but he also knew that it was only in the fire of transcending these obstacles that we humans could purge the dross from our souls and, perhaps, emerge as heroes ourselves. Our founding father Prometheus enjoins us not to become bogged down in the soul-sucking mire of moaning and complaint, but to seek always to enlarge our lives.
Zeus, for his part, did his best to bury and embroil us in so many woes that we would forget our potential as human beings and live our lives at the level of dumb beasts, looking only to the gods, not to ourselves, for salvation. And he found an exceptionally economical way to go about this. He didn’t want to spend his time constantly inventing new woes for humans—disease one week, famine the next, and so on. He found just a single instrument that would do it all at once, and he made it so that, far from trying to avoid their bane, men would actively seek to embrace it. And when he had dreamt up his device, he laughed out loud, and the roots of Olympus shook at his mirth.
He ordered great Hephaestus to fashion dumb clay and imbue it with all the faculties that Prometheus’ men already had, with one difference. This new human was to be female, not male, patterned on the irresistible beauty of the Olympian goddesses. Athena taught her the womanly skills and Aphrodite shrouded her with grace and allure, but, on Zeus’ orders, cunning Hermes gave her the mind of a lying bitch and the temperament of a thief.
When all the gods had finished their work, the beautiful product stood there motionless, a lifeless mannequin, until our common father Zeus breathed life into her. And he named the beautiful bane Pandora, “Allgift,” for all the gods had made her and all mischief in the lives of men was her gift.
Pandora unleashed all the ills that trouble mankind, to the endless amusement of the immortal gods.[93]
Prometheus had stolen fire as a way of making up for his brother’s mistake in failing to assign humans the powers they needed to survive. With Prometheus out of the way, pinned to the Caucasus mountains, his brother, Epimetheus, had no one to protect him from himself. Prometheus had warned him not to accept any gifts from the Olympian gods, for a great gulf of enmity was set between them and the Titans, but when Zeus sent him fair Pandora, to be his wife, Epimetheus forgot his brother’s words and gladly took her in.
Up until then, men had lived free of crime and labor and illness, under the reign of Cronus. But Pandora, the first woman, with the malign curiosity of a thief, removed the great lid from the jar of evils and let them out into the world. All the human emotions—constructive, destructive, and futile—were released, except for hope alone. Only hope remains in the jar, by the will of Zeus, so that men live without the promise it brings. And this was the cruelest act, for Prometheus’ gift of fire had offered us hope.
There can be no better future. Just as every day the eagle ate Prometheus’ liver, so each new dawn brings fresh toil and pain for mortal men in an endlessly repeating cycle. The Titan is bound no longer, but we are pinned by Pandora, now and forever, to the endless, wearisome cycle of procreation and production, of domesticity and death. Nevertheless, from time to time within this bitter existence a sweet fire blazes—a life that burns more brightly with a lust for glory, adventure, or vengeance, and is branded on the collective memory of humankind. These are the stories the Muse inspires in the hearts and minds of bards, to ignite our imaginations and allow us to bring our audience relief, however brief, from a world run by fickle gods. Praise be to the Muses, daughters of Zeus! Praise to all the gods!