Pandora's Jar & Heracless

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• Pandora was all-gifted by the gods in order to tempt man and make him receive her, thus sealing his own damnation. Her similarities with Eve are very evident.
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• She was not genuinely evil, but she was curious and defiant, or that's how the official story told by Hesiod in his Theogony goes.
• What Is the Story of Pandora's Box?
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• Before we go any further, we must expel the myth that Pandora carried a box. In fact, it was a jar, or as the ancient Greeks would have referred to it: an urn.
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• Pandora was forged by the divine blacksmith Hephaestus. All the gods and goddesses showered her with gifts. She was a most desirable female. Then Zeus sent her as a wife to Epimethius, the Hind-Sighted, giving her a sealed jar as dowry for the marriage. Pandora was instructed not to open the vessel under any circumstances.
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• But Pandora could not refrain from lifting the lid. She released from her jar all the evils that would torture mankind for eternity. Knowing Pandora's curiosity would prevail, this was Zeus's method of taking revenge on humans for the gift of fire that her brother-in-law, Prometheus, gave to mankind.
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• Scholars claim that the story originated from an earlier mythological substratum in which Pandora was a great goddess and provider of gifts that made life and culture possible. According to these scholars, the entities released from her urn were not evils, but cultural gifts.
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• The tale of Hesiod may have been a later invention, promoting patriarchal ethics that gave women an inferior and dependent position.
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• In Hesiod's story, Pandora brought with her a "pathos," or a big clay jar, when the god Hermes escorted her to Epimethius. In symbolic language, the earthen jar may represent the female uterus.
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• This points to an interpretation of Pandora as a symbol of fecundity, prosperity, and life. According to this interpretation, we could consider that her name, the all-gifted, refers to the gifts she brings men, and not to the gifts that the gods bestowed on her.
• 4. Heracles
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• Many are familiar with the similar sounding, "Hercules." We are not concerned with this man here, for he belongs to the Romans, who appropriated his name from the Greek, "Heracles."
• A Demi-God Who Ascended to Olympus
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• Heracles literally means, "The glory of Hera." The myth goes that Hera, the godly wife of Zeus, was extremely jealous of her consort's affair with Queen Alcmene of Thebes, mother of Heracles, and avenged herself by making life miserable for Alcmena's demi-god son.
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• There are plenty of myths about Heracles. To begin with, he was conceived by Alcmene, Queen of Thebes, while her husband was away on an expedition. That did not make her exactly an adulteress though, because Zeus disguised himself as king Amphitryon and impregnated her. Amphitryon arrived later that night and fecundated his wife with Heracles' twin brother, Iphicles.
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• The two boys were as different as day and night. Zeus' son was strong and stout and fearless, while his all-human brother, seed of a cheated husband, was small and whiny. One night, wanting to get rid of the boy, Hera sent two large snakes to drown him. Iphicles woke up and started to cry. Heracles strangled the snakes with his bare hands.
• Serving a Penance for His Crime
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• Herakles married the Princess Megara of Thebes and had two sons with her. But he was not to find any rest, for Hera still carried a vengeance. The goddess inflicted him with a fit of madness, causing him to kill his own children.
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• When he came to, overcome with grief, he took to the Oracle of Delphi to have Pythia instruct him on how to expiate himself. The sentence was that he'd have to serve Eurystheus, King of Tiryns and Mycenae, for a period of twelve years. As part of the hero's servitude, King Eurystheus compelled him to perform 12 feats so difficult they seemed impossible.

• i think is graet story of linjking