Pandora's Box

Pandora is a beautiful woman who marries Epimetheus. On her wedding day, she receives a gift, but she is told never to open it. She becomes curious. Very curious.

Find out who sent the gift. Learn why Pandora is a special woman. Enjoy how her curiosity grows and grows. Find out what she does. What happens next? Meet the dragonfly at the end of the story.

This story is a little bit scary, but it has a nice ending. It is an ancient myth and a very famous story.

Download this Pandora's Bopx mp3 Greek myth audio story.

Pandora's Box

A Tales of Time adaptation of the myth.

In ancient Greece, there lived two brothers; Empimetheus and Prometheus.

One day, they upset the gods and angered the most powerful God of all, Zeus.

Zeus decided that he would punish the brothers and he took away the ability to make fire! Without fire, the brothers soon became cold and hungry, as they couldn’t cook! So one night, Prometheus snuck over the blacksmiths house and stole some of his fire!

Zeus was very angry when he found that the brothers had disrespected him.

He needed to think of a clever way to punish them. So Zeus called upon some other Gods to help him.

Hephaestos took some clay and made a woman out of it.

Athene breathed life into the clay and the woman was brought to life!

Aphrodite then made the woman extremely beautiful!

Hermes taught her to be charming.

This was all part of the plan.

Zeus called the woman Pandora and gave her as a gift to Epimetheus.

Well both brothers knew that they should never really accept any gifts from the Gods. But Pandora was so beautiful and charming that Epimietheus fell in love and decided to marry her!

The plan was working. On their wedding day, Zeus sent another gift, but this time to Pandora.

 It was a box. But Pandora was told she could never ever open it. Pandora agreed, but she was so curious as to what was inside.

So curious, in fact, that she found herself thinking about it all day and all night. What was the point in sending a present, if she could never have it? It seemed to make no sense at all.

And she found herself spending many days sitting on the floor with the box in front of her.

There was more than one occasion when she actually put the key inside the lock – but she felt so guilty that she took it out again.

Finally, Pandora could stand it no longer. She crept up to the box, took the huge key and turned it.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and slowly lifted the lid of the box. Then she opened her eyes and looked into the open box. She thought there might be fine silks, necklaces or even gold coins.

But there was no treasure in the box.

As Pandora stood looking into the box, the look of excitement on her face quickly turned to one of disappointment and then horror.

Zeus had packed the box full of all the terrible evils he could think of.

Out of the box poured disease and poverty, hatred and anger, fear and loneliness, misery and death.

They were all in the shape of moths buzzing loudly about her head.

She screamed and dropped the lid down, waving her hands about her.

The moths stung Pandora over and over again and she fell to the floor crying.  

Epimetheus ran into the room to see what was going on.

He found her on the floor surrounded in hideous moths.

As he tried to protect her, he heard a small voice calling. He looked around the room but there was no one there. The voice seemed to be coming from the box. It was pleading to be let out.

Epimetheus and Pandora agreed that there was nothing left inside the box that could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more.

As they did, a beautiful dragonfly fluttered out and hummed softly as it gently touched all the wounds that the moths had made on Pandora; healing them.

The dragonfly was Hope.

 Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.

The End.

©Tales of Time 2008