Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth

Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth
Author(s): E. F. Beall
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1991), pp. 355-371
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Hesiod's Prometheus and
Development in Myth
E. F. Beall
"Hesiod's Prometheus" was not some given entity, a concept with

properties viewed as fixed throughout the times of the two poems which
mention it.* Prometheus was a process, as it were, already operating in
the Greek archaic period, not just in the hands of later writers such as
Plato. The development between the Theogony and the Works and Days
bespeaks a certain consciousness of the values underlying the mode of
expression we call myth. I One might also say provisionally that some need
to transcend myth is implied as well.
In our century academic thought has increasingly found it difficult to

ignore the Romantic thesis that myth is inherent in human existence.
Earlier, in the wake of the Enlightenment, Western philosophers and
philologists typically treated the categories of myth and reason in such a
way as to consider the particular historical arena of archaic Greece the
scene of a discrete transition from the first to the second as the dominant
mode of thought. That is to say, Homer and Hesiod gave way to new
heroes, the Presocratic philosophers. Some still adhere to this picture, but
now we have also had the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, for example, present
myth as something which always competes with science. To Hans Blu-
menberg, humanity exerts "work on myth" in a continuing attempt to
tame reality.2 Classicists such as F. M. Comford have in effect held that
the earliest Presocratics represented a stage in a continuous growth from
* I have profited from the comments by Pamela Long, Dorothy Naor, Sally Rogers,
Dorothy Ross, Thomas Africa, Deborah Lyons, Mark Griffith, and Richard Janko.
' The literature attempting to define this concept precisely amounts to a bottomless
pit, and the discussion below will rest content with a rough understanding: a myth is a
story about anthropomorphic beings, set in the dim past, with symbolic import for the
given culture's life experience.
2 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, tr. Ralph Manheim (3 vols.; New
Haven, 1953-57), especially II, xiii-xviii. Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, tr. Robert M.
Wallace (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).
355
Copyright 1991 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INC.
356 E. F. Beall
the creation myth exemplified by the Theogony.3 Or it is sometimes as-

serted that the archaic Greeks were aware of underlying structures within
myth.4 In a related formulation by the literary scholar Albert Cook, at
least some of the Presocratics and others partook of a higher phase of
myth itself, reached through reflection on its meaning in the earlier phase
we normally call myth.5
But whether or not myth remains with us today, if it is now respectable
to consider the Hesiodic corpus important to the intellectual growth of
archaic Greece, then should we not examine development within it as well
as the relation of its creation myths to Presocratic cosmogony? In the case
of the Prometheus narratives, we have two accounts with sufficiently close
content to ensure that the latter is modelled on the earlier one at least in
part. The sources of the earlier are essentially unknown, but movement
from it in the latter is presumably of interest as an achievement of archaic
Greece.
To say this is to oppose the dominant trend in classical scholarship
proper on the particular issue of the identification of a myth. Classicists
concerned with Hesiod have tended to view the two Prometheus narratives
as variant accounts of the same underlying entity. The differences between
them, it is held, merely point to authorial desires to emphasize different
features of "the" story.6
The presumption that two thematically similar narratives constitute
"a" story can certainly be useful as a first approximation, and here it has
no doubt helped clarify the structures of archaic Greek thought.7 How-
ever, the underlying notion that the Greeks canonized the story line of
3F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae (Cambridge, 1952). The older view of course
remains, and is perhaps best represented by W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek
Philosophy. (6 vols.; Cambridge, 1962-81), I, 26-38. A prominent intermediate formulation
is G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge,
1970), 238-51.
4E.g., myth in Homer displays "metaliterary or metalingual consciousness" and ar-
chaic art generally stresses the "paradigmatic" relations of semiotics, in the formulation
of Charles Segal, "Greek Myth as a Semiotic and Structural System and the Problem of
Tragedy," Arethusa, 16 (1983), 175-78.
5 Albert Cook, Myth and Language (Bloomington, 1980).
6This assumption is exemplified by the leading Hesiod commentators (cited below),
but a few classicists have paid attention to the so-called variations. For example, Ernst
Heitsch, "Das Prometheus-Gedicht bei Hesiod," in Hesiod, ed. Heitsch (Darmstadt, 1966),
419-35, uses them in an attempt to extrapolate backward to the presumed pre-Hesiodic
Prometheus myth.
7 For our particular example, notably in Jean-Pierre Vernant, "The Myth of Prometh-
eus in Hesiod," in his Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (New York,
1988), 183-201. He actually argues the unity to the extent of noting some apparent
references of each story to the other. However (and apart from uncertainties in these
references to be noted below), we do not, for example, assign a jazz piece based on a
popular ballad to the latter's genre, even though they have some sequences of notes in
common.
Hesiod and Myth 357
any given myth seems derived from a tradition informed by Biblical

scholarship. They supposedly construed mythical events as contiguous
with the quotidian present, in the way that Christian Fundamentalism
sees the creation, flood, etc., in Genesis. But the earliest Greeks had
trouble even conceiving of a continuous connection between the mythical
"time of gods" and their own "time of men."8 If they indeed "believed
in" their myths in some absolute sense,9 this still does not establish their
relation of mythical time to historical time nor even that of the "Mt.
Olympus," where Zeus et al. still allegedly dwelled in the time of men, to
the physical peak in Thessaly. At the least they did not agree on the
actualities of "a" myth. The treatments of the gods in the Homeric poems
certainly manifest creativity or, as it perhaps seemed to the poet(s), discov-
ery. 10 Thus it is possible that the Muses had a basically altered concept in
mind by the time they inspired the author of the second Prometheus
narrative.
Another difficulty is the allegation of recent decades that early Greek
epic was "oral-formulaic" and improvisatory. This stress has produced a
belief that the composition of the surviving works was highly protracted.
Also, a long-held notion that the Hesiodic poems in particular lack coher-
ence implies a lack of constraint on the improvisations. Thus some schol-
ars hold that neither work was a definite entity until it was written
down (much later than the main compositional activity)."I The logical
conclusion is that one cannot even speak of distinct Prometheus narratives
assignable to two different times.
It seems to me that that would carry the point too far. The early
hexameter poems probably did build upon long, overlapping traditions,
and we must also respect the possibility that any given passage of interest
came into its poem long after the main composition. 12 Nonetheless, statisti-
8 As is argued especially by M. I. Finley, "Myth, Memory, and History," History and

Theory, 4 (1965), 281-302, on 284-89. One is reminded that the Native Australians do not
connect the "Dream Time" of their myths to their quotidian time.
9 One can also be skeptical of that. For example, Theogony 27-28 say the Muses tell
both truth and "falsehoods resembling true things." The author(s) might have thought
that that poem's own myths fell in the former category, but the statement seems to
presuppose a situation where others might not agree.
10 A good recent discussion in Hartmut Erbse, Untersuchungen zurFunktion der G6tter
im homerischen Epos (Berlin, 1986), 1-5. Of course, we also find different versions of "a"
myth in a typical so-called tribal society.
11 An accessible recent treatment of the composition process which reflects this trend
is Robert Lamberton, Hesiod (New Haven, 1988), 1-37.
12 The latest schema for such additions is Friedrich Solmsen, "The Earliest Stages in
the History of Hesiod's Text," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 86 (1982), 1-31.
However, some would quarrel with the extent to which he takes the original texts' coher-
ence to derive from logical, as opposed to poetic, considerations. His paper also raises the
issue of just who made the additions. Here one can agree with Lamberton, loc. cit., that
the personality of "Hesiod" is a tenuous construct. While I use that term, or "the poet,"
358 E. F Beall
cal study shows that our own Iliad, Odyssey, Theogony, and Works and
Days use language as if they coalesced in that temporal order; and we
must assume that, for the most part, they did.'3 Most authorities now
hold that, far from betraying primitivism, the oral-formulaic conventions
are used at least in Homer in a manner which enhances the artistry.14
Thus it would appear that successive "performances" will have needed to
respect overall structure regardless of variations.15 Recently, moreover,
the view that the Hesiodic poems lack structure has been strongly chal-
lenged, even though questions certainly remain as to just what either
work's coherence constitutes.'6 In particular, the Theogony's Prometheus
narrative seems well integrated with the overall poem at the level of verbal
echoes and similar nuances.17 Apart from a verse here and there, evidently
it cannot have been added after the bulk of the work (not to mention the
Works and Days) came together.
Thus I believe we may indeed consider the two narratives to be given,
historically constituted entities. The following treatment compares their
main stages systematically, and then discusses the results in context.
Trickery versus Omniscience or Superior Trickery?
The Theogony begins its account as follows (vv. 535-70). 18 When gods
and men originally divided, Prometheus divided an ox, cheating the mind
of Zeus. He cunningly disguised the meat to look like the skin, the bones
like the meat. "Zeus who knows imperishable counsels" said mockingly
that the division was unfair, but "devious Prometheus" invited him to
below as a figure of speech, it does seem possible that each poem is the work of several
hands (or rather, voices) over a decade or so.
13 See Richard Janko, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns (Cambridge, 1982). The results
are consistent for several statistical tests of linguistic archaism, and I believe are inexplica-
ble on any hypothesis of conscious "archaizing" or of regional dialect variation.
14 The Landmarks of World Literature discussions for the non-specialist reader are not
incompatible with the point; see M. S. Silk, Homer, The Iliad (Cambridge, 1987), 16-26;
and Jasper Griffin, Homer, The Odyssey (Cambridge, 1987), 14-23. Among specialized
work I only mention a good study of that linchpin of the "oral" theory, the noun-epithet
formula: Paolo Vivante, The Epithets in Homer (New Haven, 1982).
15 Cf. Griffin, 33.
16 Most recently, Richard Hamilton, The Architecture of Hesiodic Poetry (Baltimore,
1989) gives intricate analyses of the aspects of the poems most often thought not to fit an
overall structure. Without claiming that his contribution will finally settle the matter, one
can suggest that its prodigious scholarship puts the burden of proof on anyone denying
coherence.
17 Notwithstanding the appearance that it digresses thematically from the "main"
account of origins of the gods. Hamilton, 23-40, is for the most part persuasive here.
18 Since it is necessary to refer to the texts, I provide synopses for the benefit of the
non-specialist reader (while spelling out some key expressions). A number of reasonably
cogent complete translations into the major Western languages are also readily available;
e.g., R. M. Frazer, The Poems of Hesiod (Norman, Oklahoma, 1983).
Hesiod and Myth 359
choose his portion. While realizing the deception, this imperishably coun-
seled Zeus chose the inferior portion and planned trouble for men. Ever
since, men have burned the ox's bones for the gods in sacrifice. Angrily
chastising Prometheus's treachery, imperishably counseled Zeus ceased
sending "untiring fire" to ash trees for men. However, deceiving him,
Prometheus stole fire's "far-shining splendor" for men, hiding it in the
hollow stalk of the narthex plant. Seeing untiring fire's far-shining splen-
dor among men again angered "high-thundering Zeus," who instead of
fire constructed an evil for men.'9
The poet has evidently made use here of specifically Greek traditions:
Prometheus's association with men, Zeus's epithets, use of the smoldering
pith of the narthex to transport fire,20 and perhaps recognition that hu-
mans once obtained their fire from lightning-struck trees. We also find
myth in the generic sense: the aetiological digression noting the origin of
the sacrifice and a long noticed similarity between Prometheus and the
so-called Trickster. In incarnations such as Coyote (Native America) or
Ananse the spider (West Africa), the latter is also known to act in an
impudent and crafty fashion, repeatedly, in a way which yields disastrous
consequences.2'
But careful consideration reveals a more sophisticated basis. The no
longer theriomorphic trickster Prometheus seems, unlike Coyote, a cut
above men themselves.22 More importantly, the Trickster-High God con-
frontation is cast in sharp relief: we actually get an impression of clashing
principles of stealth-concealment and of angry, absolute knowledge.23 The
stress on the stamina and radiance of the stolen fire makes an attack on
Zeus's very divinity apparent. Finally, while in general one can be too
quick to invoke the concept of phallic symbol, Coyote/Ananse's overt
19 I follow the Greek texts of M. L. West, Hesiod, Theogony (Oxford, 1966), and
Hesiod, Works and Days (Oxford, 1978), and cite his associated commentaries as "West
I" and "West II," respectively. Also, W. J. Verdenius, "Hesiod, Theogony 507-616. Some
Comments on a Commentary," Mnemosyne, 24 (1971), 1-10, and A Commentary on
Hesiod. Works and Days, vv. 1-382 (Leiden, 1985), are cited as "Verdenius I" and "Verde-
nius II," respectively.
20 West I, 324-25, gives some ancient references to the method.
21 For a review of the theory of the Trickster, see Robert D. Pelton, The Trickster in
West Africa (Berkeley, 1980), 1-24. A good collection of actual Coyote stories is Barry
Holstun Lopez, Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter (Kansas City, 1977);
for Ananse, see R. S. Rattray, Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (Oxford, 1930). The classic com-
parison with Prometheus is Karl Kerenyi, "The Trickster in Relation to Greek Mythol-
ogy," tr. R. F. C. Hull, in Paul Radin, The Trickster (London, 1956), 173-91.
22 As is noted by Jarold Ramsey, Reading the Fire (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1983), 40-43.
However, Prometheus is not as god-like as Zeus.
23 Apart from Zeus's (obvious) omniscience, there are actually 7 references to his anger
and 12 to Prometheus's deviousness in a mere 36 verses, assuming that we read cholou at
v. 562 with West I (Zeus never forgot his anger), rather than dolou as in most MSS (Zeus
never forgot the deception).
360 E. F Beall
phallicism is well attested. Freud's corresponding view of the hollow plant

stalk24 just might point to an abstraction of that phallicism, even if it is
combined with the plant's utility in transporting fire. In short, Prometheus
may be closer to meta-Trickster than Trickster already in this poem.
However, we cannot tell how much of the Theogony's abstraction here
is original to it and how much to its sources, whereas the Works and Days
innovates in its own right (vv. 47-59). Zeus engaged in concealment, angry
because crooked Prometheus had deceived him.25 He wrought woe for
men. He hid fire, but "the son of Iapetus" (Prometheus) stole it from
"Zeus of the counsels" for men, concealing it from "Zeus the thunderer's"
sight in the narthex. In anger "Zeus the cloud-gatherer" said that, while
Prometheus was an unsurpassed schemer and might rejoice over the de-
ception, this would be to rejoice over great pain to himselfr6 and to men.
Instead of fire (Zeus continued) he would give men an evil they would
love.
"So (he) spoke; and laughed out loud/ (did) the father of men and
gods."27
In a sophisticated structural analysis of "the" Hesiodic Prometheus
myth, Vernant contributes the insight that Zeus's concealing activity here
is important to the story's logic. In this he assigns implicit "hiding," i.e.,
a devious Zeus, to the earlier account as well.28 However, Zeus as trickster
has more facets in the later one: in a compact thirteen verses he hides
things and then promises forcefully, in effect, to out-trick Prometheus, in
high humor even if still in anger. This time the single reference to his
"counsels" seems ironic, while his mockery is made graphic: "you rejoice
over stealing fire ... and over great pain ... ." (actually, the latter already
suggests woman: it alludes to Hector's bitterly humorous remark in the
Iliad that his brother has brought "great pain" for all in bringing Helen
home to Troy29). To vow that men will love the evil is surely a diabolical
24 Sigmund Freud, "The Acquisition and Control of Fire," in his Complete Psychologi-
cal Works, 24 vols., ed./tr. James Strachey (London, 1953-74), XXII, 187-93.
25 Just what Zeus concealed is syntactically uncertain. Most scholars read the relevant
verb's object as the means of livelihood mentioned five verses earlier, but another possibility
is the fire mentioned three verses later. Most simply assume that Prometheus's deception
cited here is the Theogony "variant's" swindle over the meat: e.g., West II, 156; Verdenius
II, 44; Vernant, 183. However, it may only be a reflection of the Trickster's character as
having already acted in form at any point we come in on his story.
26 This may refer to the Greek tradition (which, indeed, is mentioned at Theogony
521-25) that Prometheus's liver was devoured by an eagle daily.
27 Ho-s ephat',, ek d' egelasse pater andron te theon te. My translation's oblique line
denotes the verse's caesura. Given Homeric usage, pater andron te theon te is not the
grammatical subject of ephat'.
28 Vernant, 190-92. Cf. Peter Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff, 1966), 60,
who cites some subtle word order effects in the Theogony.
29 II. 3.48-50. Verdenius II, 47, notes the syntactical connection.
Hesiod and Myth 361
twist. Finally, the poet gives Zeus the last laugh, as we would say, in an
impressive verse.30
Thus, be the difference considered subtle or striking, so far the thrust
of the later account is not that Zeus opposes superior wisdom per se to
Prometheus as in the earlier but that he is to beat the latter at his own
game.
Fleshing out the Bait; Nymph or Vamp?
At the next stage (vv. 571-84) the Theogony gives details of the evil it
has just said Zeus created. At his orders, the "famous cripple" (i.e.,
Hephaestus) fashioned an image of a maiden from clay. Athena dressed
her, veiled her, garlanded her with flowers, and crowned her with a gold
headband on which the famous cripple had worked many intricate images
of marvelous wild beasts which seemed like living beings.
While there is nothing remarkable in itself when a myth of origins
includes something as basic as woman, here the poet goes to some trouble
to cite deities in a manner consistent with their compartmentalized roles
in the pantheon. Hephaestus is the craftsman god, Athena the goddess of
domesticity, so that it is logical for them to create a female principle.
There may also be more subtle overtones: Hephaestus's physical infirmity,
which rendered him a figure of fun in Greek eyes, and Athena's ferocity.31
Homeric models have probably been used, specifically the beautification
of Hera by certain spirits in order to deceive Zeus, and Hephaestus's work
on the Shield of Achilles.32 The crown with marvelous beings is more
enigmatic. Some scholars associate it with an earth goddess.33 It is perh
related to the "mistress of the animals," which was indeed an aspect of a
earth goddess in the ancient Near East. However, the Greeks themselves
assimilated this idea to Artemis.34 Thus it seems to me plausible that
Zeus's "image of a maiden" is meant as an erotic object of contemplation
in the nymph-like sense, say, of Homer's comparison of the maiden Nausi-
caa with Artemis.35 In any case one does not find such evocative imagery
in Coyote stories.
30 Cf. Heinz Neitzel, "Pandora und das Fass,"Hermes, 104 (1976), 417. I also suggest
the line is enhanced by the formulaic connection to "father of men and gods" anchoring
the end of numerous Homeric verses.
31 On Hephaestus and Athena, see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, tr. John Raffan
(Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 167-68 and 139-43.
32 In II. 14 (see Heinz Neitzel, Homer Rezeption bei Hesiod (Bonn, 1975), 20-34), and
II. 18 (see Verdenius I, 6), respectively.
3 I. Trencsenyi-Waldapfel, "The Pandora Myth," Acta Ethnographica, 4 (1955),
99-128, on 105-7; Patricia M. Marquardt, "Hesiod's Ambiguous View of Woman,"Classi-
cal Philology, 77 (1982), 283-91, on 286-87.
34 Notwithstanding Marquardt, loc. cit.; see Burkert, 149.
35 Od. 6.102-9. See Burkert, 150-51. Other speculations are of course possible; e.g.,
Hamilton, 33.
362 E. F Beall
For all that, the corresponding Works and Days segment (vv. 60-82)
is even more elaborate. It is divided methodically into the conception,
manufacture, and naming of the evil. First, Zeus ordered Aphrodite and
Hermes as well as Hephaestus and Athena to effect various features (in
what a reading in the Greek shows is impressive poetry36). Especially,
while we get no crown with beasts this time, Aphrodite was to make the
creature actively sexual in a way to wear men out. Hermes (the in-house
Olympian trickster37) was to give her a dog-like mind and a deceitful
nature. Second, these divinities actually made the creature, with some
differences, especially in replacing Aphrodite by the Graces, Persuasion,
and the Seasons, with assistance from Athena.38 Hermes, as "herald of
the gods,"39 gave her a voice. Third, Hermes named her Pandora, since
pantes ("all") the Olympians doron edoresan ("gave a gift"), a bane to
men.
What seems to happen here is that the later poem purifies the earlier's
conception of the female entity, replacing a somewhat unclear image with
a calculated diabolical concept.40 She now has an attested earth goddess's
name, and the naming itself perhaps constitutes a bitter comment on the
ancestral chthonic "All-giver."'4' Meanwhile, whatever else it does, the
large role given to Hermes surely continues the idea of out-tricking Pro-
metheus.
Mythical Characters or Something Else?
The Theogony next (vv. 585-89) says merely that after the "evil instead
of fire" was created, Hephaestus brought out the result, and that both
immortal gods and mortal men were amazed at this "sheer inescapable
36 As discussed by Walter Nicolai, Hesiods Erga (Heidelberg, 1964), 29-30.

37 See Burkert, 156-57. This facet of the character is not as frequent as others in Homer,
but Erbse, 75, cites a few cases already there.
38 The differences have been much discussed. Some have taken them to impugn the
segment, but see West, II, 160-64, or Verdenius II, 54-60. They probably correspond to
the difference between the symbolisms associated with an original conception and a final
result, respectively, along the lines suggested by C. J. Rowe, "'Archaic Thought' in
Hesiod," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 103 (1983), 124-35, on 128-30.
39 Not in Homer, but he eventually became god of speech; see Burkert, 158.
40 Cf. Trencsenyi-Waldapfel, 105-6.
41 She was still known as chthonic goddess after Hesiod's time, at least in parts of
Greece. While neither West II, 164-66, nor Verdenius II, 58-59, credits the connection in
the poet's mind, virtually all other scholars do. See especially Joan O'Brien, "Nammu,
Mami, Eve and Pandora: 'What's in a Name?' " Classical Journal, 79 (1983), 35-45. West
and Verdenius appear to evict baby with bathwater in disputing some misguided specific
formulations.
Hesiod and Myth 363
snare."42 But the later poem has it thus (vv. 83-89). After Zeus completed
the sheer inescapable snare, he sent Hermes, "the swift messenger of the
gods leading the gift (Pandora)" or "the swift messenger leading the gift
of the gods," depending on how we read a syntactical ambiguity.43 Hermes
led her, namely, to a personage identified as "Epimetheus" (whose name,
the original audience will have noticed, meant "afterthought"). The latter
forgot the warning of "Prometheus" ("forethought") never to accept a
gift from Zeus. He received it and, having the evil, realized that he did.44
Two points are striking. First, Hephaestus is replaced as transport
agent by Hermes. Possibly the "instead of fire" phrase in the Theogony
account serves to counterpose Hephaestus to Prometheus as two different
conceptions of fire-god. In any case, to use Hermes instead is, again, a
matter of opposing trickery with trickery. At a more subtle level though,
Hermes is the generalized "boundary-crosser." As examples, he leads
King Priam to and from Achilles' tent and, more pithily, conducts souls
from the land of life to that of death.45 Thus not only is he the logical
choice to take the new creature to men; this action itself is rich in nuance.
For example, it may be correct to say, as do some, that Zeus "gives" the
female creature as father of the bride.46 In that case Hermes helps endow
the institution of marriage with awe as well as diffilculty. The nuances wer
probably enhanced for the original audience by the segment's syntactical
ambiguity, which has the effect of conflating the characters Hermes and
Pandora.
Second, the clever etymological association in the relative attitudes
of Pro- and Epi-metheus toward Zeus's gift brings them from simple
personalities to the level of character types. Mythical characters generally
have symbolic associations which at least scholars believe they can dis-
cover, but here these are relatively obvious. It seems implied that there
are people who perceive evil in advance and others who do not but are
nonetheless able to learn from mistakes. Something like that point will be
42 So Frazer translates dolon aipun amechanon. If one could construe dolos here as
"trick" or "deception" in the abstract, then this would already imply an overtly deceptive
Zeus. As applied to Prometheus's own actions the word probably does mean this. However,
its most direct sense seems to have been the more concrete "bait," as in fishing.
43 The ambiguity seems basic to the text; cf. R. Renahan, "Progress in Hesiod," (review
of West II), Classical Philology, 75 (1980), 339-58, on 347. In disputing this solution
Verdenius II, 61, does not consider the original audience's actual response to words it had
heard only a few verses previously.
I The having and the realizing are simultaneous; see Verdenius II, 62, contra West
II, 168. But this means both properties are important, so that Epimetheus is a two-sided
figure.
45 11. 24, Od. 24, respectively. See Burkert, 157-58.
46 So most recently, in effect, Genevieve Hoffman, "Pandora, le jarre et l'espoir,"
Quaderni di Storia, 24 (1986), 55-89. To be sure, the claim already appears in Bulfinch's
Mythology, which suggests that Pandora's famous vessel (discussed below) contained
Zeus's wedding presents.
364 E. F. Beall
made more explicitly later in the poem.47 True, there is precedent of sorts
for such a development in Trickster folklore proper. (In particular, Ananse
once cut up a person named "hate-to-be-contradicted" and scattered the
pieces to be absorbed by others; this is why so many people today hate to
be contradicted.48) But at the least, our narrative is more artistic.
Gynoid or First Woman? Wisdom Literature or Symbolism?
The Theogony now concludes its account (vv. 590-612).49 We hear that
the principle just created was the ancestress of mortal women, both the
"race and tribe" of these baneful creatures. 0 Then a full twenty-one verses
are used to say that (a) women are like drones in a beehive, living off the
labor of others, and that (b) to remain single or marry comes down to a
choice between dying alone with one's inheritance stolen by kinsmen, and
life of at best alternating good and evil with a woman. In contrast, in the
most famous portion of "the" myth in either "version," Works and Days
90-104 tell us this. As v. 89 states, Epimetheus knew he had an evil; for
before this time, men were far from drudgery and pain, but the woman
opened (some) "jar,""5 dispersed its contents, and wrought woe for men.
A spirit named Elpis (usually translated "Hope," alternatively "Expecta-
tion"52) alone did not fly out before it closed, by will of Zeus (if a disputed
verse is genuine). Now evils roam among men by land and by sea; diseases
come autonomously by day and by night, silently because Zeus of the
counsels removed their voices.
In an article published in this journal over four decades ago, Frederick
Teggart already observed that the Theogony's female principle "does noth-
47 Vv. 293-97 compare the strengths and failings of he who plans in advance, he who
at least listens to good advice, and he who does neither. Walcot, 62, suggests a connection
between the two passages, although he and most others take Epimetheus to be simply
stupid. That would be the latter's reputation in later Greece, and a segment in the
Theogony's theogony proper already calls him "wrong-headed." However, some have
suspected interpolation. Another view that he is two-sided at least in the Works and Days
is that of William Berg, "Pandora: Pathology of a Creation Myth," Fabula, 17 (1976), 25.
48 As relayed by Rattray, 106-9, and by Pelton, 25-27.
49Apart from a moral. Theogony 613-16 and Works and Days 105 are to the effect
that one cannot fool Zeus. Neither especially calls for comment.
50 Perhaps the implication is both the general and the particular of women; cf. Nicole
Loraux, "Sur la Race des femmes et quelques-unes de ses tribus," Arethusa, 11 (1978),
43-87. West I, 329-30, denies the authenticity of the verse. However, his reasons are
contingent on its being repetitive, and I disagree that that is an issue; cf. Verdenius I, 8.
s The reason we now speak, rather, of Pandora's "box" is that Erasmus confused the
stories of Pandora's pithos and Psyche's pyxis; see Dora and Erwin Panofsky, Pandora's
Box (2nd ed., Kingsport, Tennessee, 1962), 14-26.
52 "Hope" may unduly import Christian connotations; see most recently Valdis Lei-
nieks, "Elpis in Hesiod, Works and Days 96," Philologus, 128 (1984), 1-8, on 8.
Hesiod and Myth 365
ing," in contrast to the other's concrete action subjecting men to evil.53

Alternatively, we may put the structural similarities and differences be-
tween the two narrative segments in the following way. In the earlier
account the discourse mode myth actually collapses in favor of the differ-
ent genre of maxims. The principle Hephaestus has brought out to show
gods and men does not participate in a story about anthropomorphic
characters with personalities but is simply taken as occasion to espouse
cracker-barrel misogyny of the sort endemic to male-only gatherings of
many times and places. 4 In the other account a somewhat different break-
down has already taken place at a prior stage: the ambiguity about whether
Hermes or Pandora is "of the gods" and the shift to an etymological
focus. It may be that these collaborated to distract the original audience's
attention, thus allowing the poet to smuggle in something new. In any
case, as has long been recognized, the Works and Days segment here was
originally a different myth. It must have been familiar, since knowledge
of the jar's provenance is assumed.55
We need not attempt reconstruction of the details of the prior jar
narrative to see that this time the poet has resorted to an archetypal
mythical form in order to develop the female principle and that his treat-
ment of it is rich in symbolism. It is common in world folklore for a
woman (often First Woman herself) to act foolishly and bring on some
Ur-calamity.56 One can certainly speculate that some specifically Greek
development of the theme, perhaps already involving Pandora, constituted
the prior narrative.57 In any case, emergence from an earthenware vessel,
also a common motif, seems to stand for a transformation of the world,
not necessarily the specific one of simple activation of the vessel's contents.
(For example, a Hopi myth assigns the origin of the tribe to an originally
53 Frederick J. Teggart, "The Argument of Hesiod's Works and Days," JHI, 8 (1947),
45-77, on 48-50, although he calls the first principle "Pandora" and believes the second
was originally someone else.
54 It is easy to believe that such a locus was the smithy's shop of Works and Days 493
ff which, to be sure, say that you should find work to do rather than congregate there
during the slack winter season.
55 This has been understood at least since 1913; see A. S. F. Gow, "Elpis and Pandora
in Hesiod's Works and Days," in Essays and Studies Presented to William Ridgeway, ed.
E. C. Quiggin (Freeport, N.Y., 1966), 99-109, on 99-100.
56 One list of examples is Robert Briffault, The Mothers, 3 vols. (New York, 1927),
571. Cf. Trencsenyi-Waldapfel, 115-16. Pandora can be read as attempting to get the lid
back on the jar but too late, by will of Zeus (if v. 99 is genuine); cf. Verdenius II, 71. A
comparable example from the Blackfeet of Montana is (Ramsey, 8-9) First Woman wishing
to undo a wager which has originated death, but "Old Man" saying that the law is now
fixed.
5 There is archaeological evidence of pictorial representation of a vessel with a
chthonic earth goddess. To be sure, other speculations for the prior narrative abound, not
necessarily involving Pandora; e.g., Verdenius II, 64.
366 E. E Beall
non-Hopi person escaping from a jug in which he had been born.)58 The
import of the devoicing of the evils is much discussed.59 And then there
is the enigmatic retention of Elpis in the jar. The meaning here admittedly
turns on a certain dispute over whether this says she is kept imprisoned
away from men or is what remains to men.60 But if we accept the latter
reading, as seems most natural, then as a result of the myth's actions man
is now an "elpidic being."961 In this connection some suggest that still
another etymological connection is meant: Men no longer have "fore-
thought" with Prometheus, but only "fore-seeming" (prosdokia, synony-
mous with elpis at least to the later Greeks).62 A citation of elpis later in
the poem suggests that it amounts to self-deception.63 Perhaps the myth
gives the origin of Sartre's mauvaisfoi.4 In any case, in the account of
the Works and Days the end result of Prometheus's shenanigans is highly
nuanced.
Religious Amalgamation or Ethical Abstraction?
How do these Prometheus narratives fit into cultural history? Discus-

sions of "the" role have often seen this as a matter of prefiguring those
components of later culture whose emotive aspect is predominant, such
as art or systematized religion. As observed above, other sections of the
Theogony (i.e., creation myth) are sometimes thought to anticipate more
academic matters (Presocratic philosophy). Yet Hans-Georg Gadamer,
for example, views Hesiod's Prometheus in relation to the "tragic" figure
of the classical Athenian drama Prometheus Bound attributed to Aeschy-
lus.65 Others compare with the Eden narrative of original sin in Genesis,66
58 Relayed by H. R. Voth, The Traditions of the Hopi, Field Columbian Museum

Anthropological Series, VIII (Chicago, 1905), 155-56.
59 Most recently by Leinieks, 6-7. However, its seems difficult to determine what Zeu
action means without knowing its time and place with respect to Pandora's, and on that
point the text is silent.
60 Represented, for example, by Verdenius II, 66-70, and West II, 169-70, respectively.
The first position is dependent on reading the jar's contents as themselves evil, and it as
a prison, but this has long been disputed. For recent alternatives, see Neitzel, "Pandora
und das Fass;" and E. F. Beall, "The Contents of Hesiod's Pandora Jar: Erga 94-98,"
Hermes, 117 (1989), 227-30.
61 In the terms of Siminia Noica, "La bofte de Pandore et 'L'ambiguite' de l'elpis,"
Platon, 36 (1984), 100-124, on 116-18.
62 See Hermann Turck, Pandora und Eva (Weimar, 1931), 9-10; Richard Onians, The
Origins of European Thought (Cambridge, 1951), 404.
63 Namely, many men rely on "empty" elpis when they lack the means of livelihood,
instead of working (vv. 498-501).
6" In the construal of Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre
(Cleveland, 1956), 222.
65 Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Prometheus und die Tragodie der Kultur," in his Kleine
Schriften, 3 vols. (Tubingen, 1967-72), II, 64-74. Cf. Blumenberg, 299-326.
" The more sophisticated treatments assign myths where evil/sin exists prior to man
to one type; Adam-Eve to another. See, e.g., Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, tr.
Hesiod and Myth 367
exploiting a parallel between Pandora and Eve which has been noticed
since ancient times.67
As to this, it is proper to relate the Theogony's Prometheus to religion.
The narrative there cannot really be isolated from its primordial setting
of the origins of gods and their mutilations of one another which informs
the overall poem. For Prometheus is treated as one of the Titans, the
group of beings intermediate between the primeval principles of earth,
Eros, etc., which spawned them and the Olympian gods who came to
vanquish them. His story is placed immediately after the theogony prop-
er's listing of him and some of the others, and his defeat is one example
among others of Zeus's conquest of them.68 Thus the confrontation of
principles of stealth and angry wisdom noted earlier is inseparable from
theology or something like it. It is noteworthy here that, for all our
account's greater stress on underlying structure, Coyote stories are compa-
rable insofar as Native Americans typically feel that giving such a narra-
tive out of context distorts it.69
But the Works and Days narrative is another matter. While it can be
interpreted in religious terms, say, by assigning the origin of human
autonomy vis a vis the gods to Pandora's act,70 it nonetheless brings a
certain moral close to the surface: if you (Prometheus) attempt to deceive
the world's structure (Zeus), it will just reflect your approach with a
vengeance (Zeus out-tricks Prometheus). Specifically, the giving of life
itself will become deceptive (Pandora via Hermes), and you will end in
self-deception (Elpis) even as evil overwhelms you.71 You can learn this
lesson (Epimetheus). Also, the context assists in abstracting this logic. In
the actual poem the narrative follows a realistic discussion of working for
a living, i.e., a different genre. It begins as if it will explain men's lot, and
it is followed by two other discretely presented narratives which many
scholars (to be sure, while debating details) see as offering lessons in their
own ways, preparatory to the main didactic portion of the poem.72 That
is to say, the second Prometheus account does appear to anticipate some-
thing academic, essentially in the domain of ethical philosophy.
It is instructive to compare with a myth Plato would later put in the
mouth of the "sophist" philosopher Protagoras. To be sure, the particular
logic that "deception perpetuates itself' does not occur there (although
Emerson Buchanan (New York, 1967), 175-210, 232-78; or more recently, Ugo Bianchi,
Prometeo, Orfeo, Adamo (Rome, 1976), 55-70.
67 Among authors cited here, see Turck; Trencsenyi-Waldapfel, 107; O'Brien.
68 See Ricoeur, 206-10; or for the poetic integration Hamilton, 23-40.
69 Some tribes even believe that telling Coyote stories out of context upsets the cour
of the universe; see Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Boston, 1979), 283-84.
70 See, e.g., Blumenberg, 32.
71 Assuming we take appropriate positions on the controversies noted above.
72 West II and Verdenius II give numerous references concerning the "'five races of
men" and the hawk-nightingale fable at the appropriate locations.
368 E. F. Beall
we find it implicit elsewhere in European culture.)73 Nonetheless, Prota-

goras is made to begin a speech on the teachability of virtue with a mythos,
while distinguishing this and logos ("argument") in places as each useful
in its respective way. Assigned to create mortal beings, Prometheus and
Epimetheus agreed the latter would allot them their characteristics. He
failed to reserve some good qualities for men while creating the animals.
So Prometheus stole fire and craft knowledge for men from Hephaestus
and Athena. Fearing for their survival, Zeus then gave them shame and
justice via Hermes, insuring these to all whereas Prometheus had allotted
crafts individually. This is why men take advice on virtues from everyone
but on crafts only from few. Arguments about Athenian views and prac-
tices on virtue then follow.74
We notice immediately that the second Hesiodic and Protagorean
"variations on the theme of' Prometheus have some motifs in common
(such as Epimetheus lacking foresight, pairing Hephaestus and Athena,
Zeus and Hermes). But the important point is their common juxtaposition
of different types of discourse, indicating conceptualization of each type
as an entity in and of itself. The "five races of men" narrative which
follows in the Works and Days is even stated to be "another logos" with
respect to its antecedent. The understanding of the term logos itself, to
encompass both narratives, is different,75 and Plato may of course intend
irony in having the much despised Sophism speak as if myth were as
useful as logical argumentation.76 Also, Protagoras is said to make his
point directly, whereas with Hesiod the moral noted above remains be-
neath the surface. Yet the ability to see myth as one discourse type
among others seems common to both cases. Given the vagaries of artistic
composition we cannot be precise on just how the Works and Days au-
thor(s) grasped myth abstractly.77 But surely it is fair to say that the
treatment manifests mythology, not just mythography.78
73 Notably in Wagner's "Ring" cycle. In Das Rheingold the character with a Trickster-
like role (Loge) persuades the High God (Wotan) to employ stealth to secure the Nibelung's
ring, on the grounds that the latter had already stolen the gold to fashion it. Here too ruin
ensues, at the cycle's end.
74 The myth proper is at Plato, Protagoras 320C-323A, the speech at 320C-328D. A
recent commentary is Patrick Coby, Socrates and the Sophistic Enlightenment (Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania, 1987), 53-70.
75 Most translate logon at Works and Days 106 as "story," following Homeric usage
with the plural logoi. But the succeeding account of entire groups of men, not individuals,
is not a story in the normal sense, even if Hesiod does not yet mean "argument" as does
Plato. I suggest "discourse."
76 Cf. Blumenberg, 328-35.
" I doubt we can tell where Hesiod or the earliest Presocratics stood in the gray
area between sheer "poetic inspiration" and the methodical setting of prior concepts to
communicative discourse. Thus we cannot impute, for example, Vernant's analysis of the
Prometheus myth into three discrete levels (formal, semantic, social-cultural) to any actual
consciousness at the time.
78 At least with respect to the Prometheus myth itself and probably more. Cook, 54,
Hesiod and Myth 369
At the same time, however, there is a certain contrary trend in the

matter of woman. The development from the Theogony Prometheus narra-
tive to that of the Works and Days is in the direction of an essentially
mystical view of woman as problematic entity. The earlier poem's misog-
yny is replaced by one which, although less crude on the surface, nonethe-
less conceives of woman as monstrous in a manner approaching the
psycho-analytically primordial. Both that Hesiodic scholarship which is
feminist in orientation and that which sees "the" Hesiodic attitude toward
women as relatively benign have tended toward the common view of
essential identity of the two accounts.79 However, the later one's diabolical
detail in fleshing out the female principle, the perversion of the chthonic
image "Pandora," and the fateful outcome of her action go rather beyond
the view that women are like drones in a beehive. Instead, the imagery
suggests Dorothy Dinnerstein's "Dirty Goddess" psychological concept,
whereby we experience woman as awesome even as we reject her body.80
Her alleged problematic nature effectively becomes a religion in the Works
and Days.
Presumably the author(s) of the later Hesiodic poem wished to com-
pose a piece more relevant to daily life in the small scale agricultural
setting of Boeotia in the late eighth or early seventh centuries B.C., than
had been the earlier. Still, the latter's utility as a poetic model was recog-
nized, perhaps in the manner that the Odyssey's author(s) had viewed the
Iliad.8" We may speculate that retrenchment into a purer form of myth
in denigrating women was occasioned by the latter having become an
easy target in agricultural circles with the onset of male-oriented plow
techniques some centuries previously. 82 Perhaps also an increased popula-
tion was seen as a threat,83 and as conditioned by female wantonness. In
backhandedly allows that "the" Hesiodic Prometheus myth is "allegorized," while claim-
ing that most of the text of the Hesiodic poems remains in the "Neolithic" phase of myth.
However, one may doubt any turning on and off of self-consciousness within an artistically
integrated poem.
'9 Most prominently among recent work, despite their disagreements: Linda S. Suss-
man, "Workers and Drones: Labor, Idleness and Gender Definition in Hesiod's Beehive,"
Arethusa, 11 (1978), 27-41; Marquardt; Jean Rudhardt, "Pandora, Hesiode et les
femmes,"Museum Helveticum, 42 (1986), 231-46. Marylin B. Arthur, "Cultural Strategies
in Hesiod's Theogony: Law, Family, Society," Arethusa, 15 (1982), 63-81, on 74-75,
differentiates them a bit more.
80 Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (New York, 1976), 124-56.
81 As evidenced by linguistic dependences, the Works and Days is very much aware
of all three earlier poems. Perhaps its author(s) also profited from a certain artistic
self-consciousness Homerists have noticed in the Odyssey.
82 So Thalia Phillies Howe, "Linear B and Hesiod's Breadwinners," Transactions of
the American Philological Association, 89 (1958), 44-65, on 62-63.
83 However, that there was objectively a crisis is unproven. (Nor can this be shown
from our poem itself; see, e.g., Ernest Will, "Hesiode: Crise Agraire? ou recul de l'aristocra-
tie?," Revue des Etudes Grecques, 78 (1965), 542-56.)
370 E. F. Beall
any event the t

history: after Homer had at least been willing to allot personality to an
Andromache or Penelope, classical Athens became a highly sexist soci-
ety.84 For all that, the agricultural milieu will have required positive
appraisal of straightforwardness as compared with trickery in personal
relations. Surely this is what produced and colored the employment of a
Prometheus-Zeus myth in a fundamentally ethical context.
From Myth to Sociology?
The above discussion points to a development still essentially within

myth, which, however, might also preface movement away from myth,
toward the more literal modes of representing the world which the later
Greeks conceived. One can certainly be suspicious of the idea that Greek
myth "led to" philosophy in any continuous way, but another possible
model is myth's inadequacy becoming so manifest as to necessitate seeking
alternatives.
Consider the respective contexts of the second Prometheus narrative
and the "parallel" Adam-Eve story. The latter does lead continuously to
something more literal, within the Old Testament itself: it is integrated
into a purported history, from the immediately succeeding Cain-Abel
story down to the author's recent past.85 In contrast, the Greek narrative
is followed by "another logos" about five races. It is the latter which
begins with a primordial situation, roughly orders other generations of
men chronologically, and ends with the poet's quotidian present/future.
Thus, notwithstanding a tendency to see it as "myth" in the same sense
as its antecedent, its treatment of events in time is different from the
latter's "once gods acted; now we have disease." It actually reads as if
there were three even earlier "times of gods" before the one where they
intervened in Homer's battlefields, mentioned just prior to the present
"time of men."86 It seems intermediate between myth and a theory of
social development which, had it been historically realized like the natural
"science" the earliest Presocratics initiated, would not have been espe-
cially empirically oriented.
84 A review of the relevant literature is Phyllis Culham, "Ten Years After Pomeroy:
Studies of the Image and Reality of Women in Antiquity," Helios, 13.2 (1986), 9-30.
85 If the so-called Documentary Hypothesis is valid in something like its classic form,
then the assimilation to a putative history down through the entrance into Canaan (which
surely has some actual historical basis) had already taken place a few hundred years after
that, still some hundreds of years prior to redaction of the Pentateuch as we now have it.
Of course all this is controversial. A non-dogmatic and accessible, if cursory reference is
John Bright, A History of Israel (3rd ed., Philadelphia, 1981), 67-74.
86 Thus Finley, 286-87, and Rowe, 132-34, are incorrect in saying that this narrative
contains no time element whatever. While one might deny it the status of "history" since
it has deviations from chronological order, is quite symbolic, and is less critical than
Herodotus, it simply is not a myth in the generic sense of a concrete story with characters.
Hesiod and Myth 371
My suggestion here is that the failure to integrate the Prometheus

narrative itself into any type of quasi-historical narrative is related to its
tendency to transcend "story,"where a high degree of symbolism ends in
conflating Pandora and Hermes and in stressing etymology. True, even
after that the need of a concrete illustration that Epimetheus knew he had
an evil may dictate something like the jar story the poet imports to
conclude his account. Perhaps, however, that exhausts the momentum,
necessitating an entirely new mode of discourse in order to continue the
poem itself.
Hans Blumenberg speculates that the enigmatic saying of the so-called
first philosopher Thales a century or so later, "all things are full of gods,"
is a reductio ad absurdum of myth.87 However, and to speak provisionally
(the matter might be explored elsewhere), the Works and Days may al-
ready bring the Trickster tale to the point of requiring new means if more
is to be said.
Washington, D.C.*
87 As one of a number of attempts to "bring myth to an end" he notes during

course of his book; Blumenberg, 25-26.
* 721 6th Street, S.E., Apt. B, Washington, D.C. 20003.

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Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth

"Hesiod's Prometheus" was not some given entity, a concept with

In our century academic thought has increasingly found it difficult to

Copyright 1991 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INC.

the creation myth exemplified by the Theogony.3 Or it is sometimes as-

any given myth seems derived from a tradition informed by Biblical

8 As is argued especially by M. I. Finley, "Myth, Memory, and History," History and

Trickery versus Omniscience or Superior Trickery?

phallicism is well attested. Freud's corresponding view of the hollow plant

Fleshing out the Bait; Nymph or Vamp?

Mythical Characters or Something Else?

36 As discussed by Walter Nicolai, Hesiods Erga (Heidelberg, 1964), 29-30.

Gynoid or First Woman? Wisdom Literature or Symbolism?

ing," in contrast to the other's concrete action subjecting men to evil.53

Religious Amalgamation or Ethical Abstraction?

How do these Prometheus narratives fit into cultural history? Discus-

58 Relayed by H. R. Voth, The Traditions of the Hopi, Field Columbian Museum

we find it implicit elsewhere in European culture.)73 Nonetheless, Prota-

At the same time, however, there is a certain contrary trend in the

any event the t

From Myth to Sociology?

The above discussion points to a development still essentially within

My suggestion here is that the failure to integrate the Prometheus

87 As one of a number of attempts to "bring myth to an end" he notes during

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Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth

Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth