After Prometheus created the race of men and gave them fire in direct defiance of Zeus’s will, the King of the gods was angry and determined to spoil Prometheus’s handiwork. So he had Hephaestus make the first woman, and asked the goddesses to shower her with countless graces and gifts, before sending her to Prometheus’s unwary brother, Epimetheus.

Epimetheus took Pandora into his home, all unsuspecting, and there Pandora (herself completely innocent in all that followed) opened the jar that Zeus had given her. Out poured every grief and affliction since known to mortal men. Hope alone remained; and whether that was a good thing or a bad remains a matter of controversy to this day.

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