Pandora's Box

On Mount Olympus, the gods stood gathered around a figure that had just been shaped. It had no breath yet and no name. One by one, each god stepped up to it and placed a gift of their own inside.

The goddess Aphrodite came first. She touched the face lightly, and a radiant beauty spread across it, warm as sunlight falling on the surface of a lake. The god Hermes came next. He placed the gift of clever speech on its lips, so that one day its words could win over anyone who listened. Then a soft sound rang through the air. It was the gift of music, just brought by the god Apollo, so that its voice would one day be as sweet and gentle as a quiet melody. The other gods stepped forward in turn, and each one quietly added one more gift. Many more gifts followed, their names long forgotten, until at last the figure was whole.

When the first breath slipped into its chest, the figure gently opened its eyes. The first woman of humankind had been born, right there among the gods, lovelier and more complete than anyone had ever seen. The gods named her Pandora.

This is a story the ancient Greeks kept and passed down through many generations. In it, Pandora was not made simply to bring beauty to the world. Not long before, the god Prometheus had taken fire from the gods and carried it down to humankind. On Mount Olympus, thunder rumbled behind gray clouds for many days on end. Zeus was angry that a precious gift of the gods had fallen into human hands. Making Pandora was part of the way Zeus answered that.

Pandora was brought down to earth, to a small house where Epimetheus lived. He was the younger brother of Prometheus. The road from the heavens down to the ground was long and quiet, with white clouds gliding past on either side like thin ribbons of silk. When the door of the house opened, Epimetheus saw before him a lovely, gentle young woman. She spoke so gracefully that he simply stood there, lost for words.

Earlier, Prometheus had warned his brother with great care. Any gift that came from Zeus, however dazzling, had to be looked at closely before it was accepted. A beautiful gift is not always a good one, he said. But standing before Pandora, Epimetheus forgot that warning completely. He welcomed her into the house at once, without the slightest hesitation.

In the house of Epimetheus there was a box that had been put away long ago. It sat quietly in a corner of the room, where hardly anyone noticed it. This was where he had once gathered the harmful things he had no use for, back when he was preparing life on earth for humankind. Then he had closed the lid tight, and he had never opened it since.

Pandora came to live in that house. Every day, as she moved about the room, she came upon the box sitting silent in its corner. At first she only glanced at it, the way she glanced at everything else. But as the days went by, the box seemed to have a pull of its own. It quietly drew her eyes toward it every time she walked past.

The more people are told to stay away from something, the more they want to know what it hides. It is an ordinary curiosity, like that of any child standing in front of a closed door. Pandora was the same. With each day that passed, the question in her heart grew a little bigger. What could that box be keeping, that it had to be hidden so carefully?

She told herself she would never touch it. But in the days that followed, each time she passed the corner, her steps grew slower. One afternoon she sat beside the box for a long while, her hand resting lightly on the lid, just to feel the cool wood under her palm. Then she drew her hand back, scolding herself for being so curious.

Then one day, the curiosity in Pandora's heart grew so great that she could not bear it any longer. She knelt beside the box with her hands trembling a little. She meant only to lift the lid a crack and take one quick look inside.

But that small crack was enough. The moment the lid lifted, a stream of faint gray shadows came pouring out, swirling like smoke. It slipped through the gap and spread through the whole house. In that smoke were dull aches of the body and hot flashes of anger. There was envy too, creeping into people's hearts. They swept past Pandora so fast that she felt only a passing breath of wind. Then all of them flew out through the window and scattered in every direction, drifting farther and farther away until they could no longer be seen.

Pandora was frightened. She hurried to shut the lid as fast as she could, pressing down hard with both hands, as if that could stop what had just happened. But it was too late. Everything inside had already escaped, all but one thing.

She bent close and looked inside once more, her heart still pounding. At the very bottom of the box, a small light was flickering softly, warm and gentle, quite unlike the gray shadows that had just flown away. It was like a small candle that had never quite gone out. The light was the warm gold of honey, and it trembled to a slow, steady rhythm, like the breathing of something still very much alive. It was Hope. Pandora closed the lid again, slowly and carefully, as if afraid of putting out that tiny light. Hope stayed behind. It did not fly away like the other things, and it still lay quietly in the warm darkness at the bottom of the box.

People say that to this very day, the small light has never gone out. It still burns quietly at the bottom of that old box, small but steadfast, among all the darkness that once flew past it.