Lest she should weary of her play he called to her. He would take her
into the houses of men. As they drew near to the houses they saw a
woman seated on the ground, weeping; her husband had suddenly become
hard to her and had shut the door on her face.
They came upon a child crying because of a pain that he could not
understand. And then they found two men struggling, their strife being
on account of a possession that they had both held peaceably before.
In every house they went to Epimetheus would say, "I am the brother of
Prometheus, who gave you the gift of fire." But instead of giving them
a welcome the men would say, "We know nothing about your relation to
Prometheus. We see you as a foolish man upon stilts."
Epimetheus was troubled by the hard looks and the cold words of the men
who once had reverenced him. He turned from the houses and went away.
In a quiet place he sat down, and for a while he lost sight of Pandora.
And then it seemed to him that he heard the voice of his wise and
suffering brother saying, "Do not accept any gift that Zeus may send
you."
He rose up and he hurried away from that place, leaving Pandora playing
by herself. There came into his scattered mind Regret and Fear. As he
went on he stumbled. He fell from the edge of a cliff, and the sea
washed away the body of the mindless brother of Prometheus.
Not everything had been spilled out of the jar that had been brought
with Pandora into the world of men. A beautiful, living thing was in
that jar also. This was Hope. And this beautiful, living thing had got
caught under the rim of the jar and had not come forth with the others.
One day a weeping woman found Hope under the rim of Pandora's jar and
brought this living thing into the house of men. And now because of
Hope they could see an end to their troubles. And the men and women
roused themselves in the midst of their afflictions and they looked
toward gladness. Hope, that had been caught under the rim of the jar,
stayed behind the thresholds of their houses.
As for Pandora, the Golden Maid, she played on, knowing only the
brightness of the sunshine and the lovely shapes of things. Beautiful
would she have seemed to any being who saw her, but now she had strayed
away from the houses of men and Epimetheus was not there to look upon
her. Then Hephaestus, the lame artisan of the gods, left down his tools
and went to seek her. He found Pandora, and he took her back to
Olympus. And in his brazen house she stays, though sometimes at the
will of Zeus she goes down into the world of men.
When Polydeuces had ended the story that Castor had begun, Heracles
cried out: "For the Argonauts, too, there has been a Golden Maid--nay,
not one, but a Golden Maid for each. Out of the jar that has been with
her ye have taken forgetfulness of your honor. As for me, I go back to
the Argo lest one of these Golden Maids should hold me back from the
labors that make great a man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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