In many Western countries, 13 is considered a very unlucky number. Why is 13 considered an unlucky number? This tradition may be related to the creation of the early calendar, which is not suitable for sowing on the 13th day of each month of the year, and of course other claims such as Satan is said to be thirteenth in the spells cast by witches, and the thirteenth card of the main tarot card represents death. There are also 13 people in the Last Supper, and Judas, who betrayed Christ, is the thirteenth disciple of Jesus, who arrived at the Last Supper the latest but left first, so the 13th of the Beauty series discusses the synonym for the next disaster: Pandora's Box.
In the minds of many, Pandora was a scheming, calculating schemer, but in fact, in Greek stories, Pandora was a maiden made out of dirt and water by the god of craftsmen, Hephaestus, and the most popular beauty in the human world. In ancient Greek, Pan meant all and Dora was the gift. Therefore, Pandora is a gift from the gods to mankind, so beautiful, so enchanting, wandering in the world.
Pandora's birth was only a tool of god's political struggle with mankind, when prometheus, the titan giant, stole the fire into the human world, which annoyed Zeus. Zeus not only punished Prometheus, but also took revenge on humanity. Zeus thought of the by-products of Prometheus's creation of mankind: war, disease, plague, suffering... At that time, Prometheus locked these things that were harmful to mankind in a jar, and later knew that he would definitely be arrested by Zeus, so he deposited it in the house of his younger brother Epimetheus in advance and let his younger brother Epimetheus take care of it. Epimetheus means "hindsighter" in Greek, and Prometheus means "prophet and foresight" in Greece.
Epimetheus looked at the jar very well, and Zeus could not do anything about it, so Zeus went to great lengths to create Pandora, dress up Pandora, and then send Pandora to Epimetheus, borrowing her curiosity to open the magic jar and bring misfortune to the world. Of course, there is another theory that Zeus designed the magic pot, and when he sent Pandora to the human world, he also brought the magic pot to the human world.
With the command of the god Zeus, the chief designer of Olympus, fire and the forging god Hephaestus (Venus's legitimate husband) mixed with water and soil, and gradually gave birth to a moving image like a water hibiscus; Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love and beauty, gave her the fragrance of madness to men and was no less than that of the fragrant concubine; Athena, the goddess of wisdom, taught her female red and gave her wisdom; and hermes, the messenger of the gods, taught her the ability to speak. Pandora became a large Barbie doll, and the gods seemed to return to the age of "living at home" overnight, competing to join her and give her all her talents.
After the gods dressed up Pandora, they deliberately brought her to Epimetheus, and as soon as Epimetheus saw Pandora, he fell in love as the gods hoped, and immediately married Pandora. Pandora only thought that she was a lucky girl, who was blessed by the gods as soon as she was born, and soon found a husband who loved her deeply, becoming a young woman who was loved by her husband.
After getting married, Epimetheus was indeed obedient to Pandora in everything, and she could control everything at her disposal, but there was one thing he did not allow Pandora to touch. It was a jar. Epimetheus didn't know what was in it, only that it was his brother's deposit with him, and Prometheus had told him not to open the jar under any circumstances.
Epimetheus, though unintelligent, was obedient and honest, never touching the jar, and certainly not letting Pandora touch it. But Pandora became curious about the only jar in the house that she didn't let herself touch. Finally, one day, she took advantage of her husband's absence and secretly opened the jar.
In Pandora, painted by the British pre-Raphaelite painter Waterhouse, the painter painted Pandora with brilliant colors like a genie in the mountains and forests. She knelt in front of the gold box (the painter turned the small jar mentioned above into a gold box that looked more valuable), and she opened the box curiously and quietly looked inside. She was so intoxicated with curiosity that she didn't even notice that an ominous black smoke was burrowing out of the golden box, allowing more disasters to fly into the world. The painter makes a subtle contrast between Pandora's piety, intoxication and caution and the ominousness that emerges from the box, which makes people sigh only: Pandora is just a naïve girl full of curiosity, and her sins are unconscious, so she is also innocent.
The moment she opened the box, the disasters hidden deep in the box rushed out of the box and spread out of every corner of the earth, the god of death began to run wildly on the earth, and mankind began to endure endless pain and suffering. In fact, there is also a trace of God's care for mankind in the box, that is, the beautiful thing that Athena quietly put at the bottom of the box in order to save the fate of mankind - "hope". But the panicked Pan Da beauty closed the lid of the box before the "hope" rushed out, and closed the "hope" in the box forever, so hope can only remain in the bottom of human hearts forever. This box is also named Pandora's Box for the beauty that opened it. And Pan Da beauty has also become a top curse because of the action of opening the box, which has plagued the entire human race.
The box she brought about human disaster will be understood differently from different angles. Hope may be the calamity that flies out of the box, or the happiness that flies out of the box, and they are scattered all over the world, but fortunately they remain in our hands, so that we have learned to endure this unfortunate life. In fact, human nature is not Pandora's box, opening it releases evil, and closing it closes hope.
For a long time, Pandora almost became the "red face" in Western culture, a model of evil and vanity. Most painters of the 16th and 17th centuries also saw her this way. Pandora, holding the jar, is either vain or evil.
By the 19th century, pandora's view had changed dramatically: it wasn't she who was really at fault, it was the gods who were high above. Even in the circulation of the story, the person who really put the human suffering into The hands of Pandora became Zeus himself. Therefore, in the works after the 19th century, Pandora not only changed from a jar to a gold box, but even her eyes became simple and clear, and she was reduced to a naïve girl.
Pandora, Alexander Cabannell, 1873 Oil on canvas, 70.2cm×49.2cm, Walter Museum of Art, Baltimore