Book summary “Pandora's Jar”: summary

Introduction

You inherit a cultural understanding of Greek mythology that reduces women to simple villains, passive victims, and monstrous threats. When you look at classic stories, you encounter figures who seem defined entirely by their relationship to heroic men. This perspective hides the complex choices and brutal realities these women faced in ancient sources.

Natalie Haynes argues in Pandora's Jar that classical myths are dynamic mirrors that have systematically sanitized male violence and vilified women for millennia. You will discover how translators, poets, and modern artists distorted original texts to serve patriarchal narratives.

The book guides you through ten major mythological figures to examine the gap between ancient evidence and modern reception. You will explore how these characters operated outside the shadow of traditional heroes.

• How did a simple translation error turn a storage jar into a box of evils?
• What drove queens and warriors to commit desperate acts of survival?
• Why do modern retellings continue to silence female voices?

1. Pandora

The familiar image of Pandora opening a box stems from a sixteenth-century translation error, transforming a top-heavy storage jar into a portable trap.

Ancient Sources and Etymology

In the eighth century BCE, Hesiod lived in Boeotia in central Greece. He presents Pandora in two different poems, first as an unnamed construct to punish mankind and later as the named bearer of a jar of miseries.

Prometheus tricks Zeus at Mekone by hiding the meat beneath an ox's stomach and the bones under glistening fat, leading Zeus to retaliate by creating the first woman. While people often assume Pandora means all-gifted because various gods bestowed qualities upon her, the active verb form in Greek suggests she is all-giving. Ancient art and inscriptions occasionally call her Anesidora, meaning she who sends up gifts, linking her directly to the earth that sustains life.

An Athenian kylix in the British Museum attributed to the Tarquinia Painter dates to 460 BCE and depicts Athene and Hephaestus flanking Pandora, labeling her as Anesidora.

Athenian Context and Modern Tropes

Looking for a Latin word for the Greek pithos, Erasmus used a word that meant box, introducing the error during the sixteenth century before he died in 1536. Jean Cousin painted Pandora with a jar around 1550, but by 1871 Rossetti completed his portrait of Pandora holding a casket.

Nathaniel Hawthorne published Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls in 1853, and Roger Lancelyn Green released Tales of the Greek Heroes in 1958.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne introduced Pandora as a sad naughty child who immediately demands to open a mysterious box.
• Epimetheus escapes major blame in these modern retellings.

2. Penelope

Penelope has been idealized for millennia for her loyalty, despite spending twenty years separated from Odysseus and orchestrating brilliant deceptions.

Weaving and Deception

Odysseus spent ten years fighting at Troy and another decade trying to return. Traditional portrayals focus strictly on her chastity and single motherhood.

Odysseus spends seven years trapped with Calypso and a year with Circe, while Penelope remains in Ithaca besieged by more than a hundred suitors consuming her estate.

Penelope uses the laborious task of weaving and unweaving a shroud as a physical and mental deception to keep the suitors at bay for years.

Antinous explains to Telemachus in Book Two how Penelope deceived the suitors for nearly four years before a maid snitched on her.

Literary Retellings and Voices

Margaret Atwood's 2005 novel The Penelopiad retells the epic from Penelope's perspective in Hades, focusing heavily on her caustic worldview and the haunting execution of the twelve slave-women.

3. Jocasta

In early epic and later variant plays, Jocasta appears not merely as an incestuous victim, but as an active political negotiator working to avert civil war.

Sophocles famously staged Oedipus Tyrannos in 429 BCE, coming second in the dramatic competition to the lesser-known playwright Philocles, the nephew of Aeschylus. Oedipus Tyrannos has a total length of 1,530 lines.

Epicaste and Euripides

Homer refers to Jocasta as Epicaste in Book Eleven of the Odyssey. Odysseus encounters Epicaste in the Underworld during his visit to the dead Tiresias.

Homer's account of the story takes only ten short lines. Epicaste hangs herself out of grief immediately when the gods reveal the truth.

Euripides presented Phoinissai in 409 BCE. This staging occurred twenty years after the staging of Oedipus Tyrannos.

Papyrus Discoveries

Egyptologists found papyrus strips on a mummy acquired by the University of Lille, which were finally read in 1974. Scraps of cartonnage contained 120 lines of poetry dramatizing the Theban story by Stesichorus. Stesichorus lived approximately 150 years before Sophocles wrote his play.

Pausanias lived and wrote during the second century CE. Pausanias referenced the Oedipodeia to claim that the incestuous marriage was exposed before children were born.

4. Helen

Helen's life story is defined by divine manipulation, forced marriages, and brilliant legal defenses that challenge her role as the instigator of war.

While traditionally raised as the daughter of Tyndareus and Leda of Sparta, most sources call her the father of Zeus, who allegedly seduced Leda in the form of a swan. In the lost epic Cypria, she is described as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, where Nemesis transformed into a goose and laid an egg that a shepherd found and gave to Leda.

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Tintoretto painted versions of Leda and the swan, with Leonardo's version showing four babies emerging from cracked eggshells, including Helen. A fresco of Leda and the swan was uncovered in Pompeii on the Via del Vesuvio in 2018.

The Phantom Tradition

When Helen was either seven or ten years old, the fifty-year-old hero Theseus and his friend Pirithoos abducted her from the temple of Artemis in Sparta. Theseus and Pirithoos drew lots for Helen after abducting her, and Theseus won her, storing her in the safekeeping of a friend near Athens.

Archaic writers like Stesichorus and later playwright Euripides recorded that Hera, angry at losing the judgment of Paris, created an eidolon out of air to take to Troy, while Hermes hid the real Helen in Egypt with King Proteus.

Euripides and Trauma

Euripides portrays Helen not as a willing adulteress who caused the war, but as a victim of divine caprice and male abandonment. Euripides' play Helen was first performed in 412 BCE, three years after The Trojan Women.

Helen argues that Greece actually got lucky because she was sold for her beauty while preventing a barbarian conquest, and points out that she was forcibly married to Deiphobos after Paris died.

5. Medusa

Medusa's evolution from an apotropaic guardian to a brutalized monster reflects Western art's persistent tendency to celebrate violence against women.

Mythological Origins

Hesiod describes Medusa as mortal while her siblings are immortal and portrays her encounter with Poseidon as consensual in a meadow. Ovid presents her as a stunning woman who was raped by Poseidon inside Athene's temple, after which Athene punishes Medusa by turning her hair into snakes, effectively punishing the victim of assault.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa is described as clarissima forma before being brutally assaulted by Poseidon, prompting Athene to exact her cruel revenge.

Early visual representations of Gorgons were monstrous disembodied faces called gorgoneia, used as protective amulets to ward off supernatural danger and tame human fears. Archaeological artifacts like the Olympia shield decoration show hideous faces with bulbous noses, tusks, and twisting snakes. These functioned as apotropaic devices, helping warriors master their own fears by turning terrifying imagery against their enemies on the battlefield.

Visitors to the Archaeological Museum in Olympia can view a sixth-century BCE shield decoration featuring a hideous face surrounded by twisting snakes and three large wings.

Trophies and Dualities

Perseus requires guidance and gifts from multiple gods and mythological figures, including Athene, Hermes, the Graiai, and the nymphs, who supply him with winged sandals, a special rucksack, and the cap of invisibility. Furthermore, he kills Medusa while she is asleep rather than engaging in a fair fight.

In Pseudo-Apollodorus and ancient vase paintings such as the pelike by Polygnotos, Perseus is shown using a curved blade to slice through the neck of a sleeping Medusa while looking away into his shield's reflection.

Sculptures like Antonio Canova's Perseus Triumphant and Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa celebrate the hero while displaying gruesome contempt for the female corpse. This artistic tradition reinforces a persistent cultural narrative that frames powerful women as monsters deserving of disfigurement.

Cellini's bronze statue in Florence depicts a triumphant Perseus trampling Medusa's headless torso in a display of virulent misogyny.

Medusa's name translates to ruler or guardian, reflecting her ancient apotropaic role. Even after death, her powers are divided: blood from the left side of her body is fatal, while blood from the right side is used by Asclepius to provide salvation and healing.

6. The Amazons

Greek heroes in epic poetry exhibited a self-absorbed, individualistic mindset, often sacrificing comrades for personal renown. In stark contrast, ancient art and texts depict Amazons fighting closely alongside one another as a cohesive tribe.

Ancient Amazons fought as a cohesive, highly organized tribe characterized by intense collective loyalty rather than isolated heroic individualism.

Quintus Smyrnaeus lists twelve named Amazons accompanying Queen Penthesilea into battle during the Trojan War to ensure their mutual survival.

War Belts and Armor

Ancient Greek authors consistently used the word zoster to describe Hippolyta's belt, which is the exact same martial term used for a male warrior's weapons belt. Translators frequently rendered this as girdle, falsely associating it with restrictive feminine undergarments to make the warrior queen appear less alarming. Heracles sought Hippolyta's war belt as his ninth labour, an object representing her supremacy and gifted by Ares.

Unlike Greeks who wore tunics with bare legs, Amazons wore ornate tunic tops over tight leggings or trousers decorated with geometric patterns, chequerboard squares, and animal skins, paired with protective linothorax armor and lace-up boots. A fifteen centimetres tall alabastron perfume bottle from around 480 BCE in the British Museum depicts an Amazon wearing straight-legged trousers, a linothorax tunic, holding an axe, and carrying a quiver. Late ancient writers like Pseudo-Apollodorus claimed Amazons ironed or surgically removed a breast. This arose from a mistaken Greek belief that the word Amazon derived from a- and mastos meaning without breast, completely ignoring that Amazon was a foreign loan-word. None of the thousands of ancient vase paintings depicting Amazons show single-breasted warriors or any hindrance when handling weapons.

Penthesilea and Modern Echoes

As the daughter of Ares, Penthesilea sought out single combat against Achilles to defend Troy and achieve glory, even inventing the double-pointed war axe associated with her tribe. Alternative endings to the Iliad and the lost poem Aethiopis position Penthesilea's arrival at Troy with the same grand introduction given to male heroes like Achilles.

While ancient writers respected Amazon martial prowess, later modern adaptations stripped them of character and agency, reducing warrior queens into abused corpses. Robert Graves's 1955 poem Penthesilea focuses on necrophilia performed at line four on her dead body by a grief-stricken Achilles. Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer capture the true essence of ancient Amazon mythology by demonstrating that women are stronger together, ultimately sharing their power across an entire group rather than hoarding individual glory. In the final season of Buffy, an artifact and spell empower every potential slayer globally, transforming the Chosen One into the Chosen Many.

7. Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon is driven by unquenchable maternal rage over the sacrificial slaughter of her daughter Iphigenia rather than mere lust.

Aeschylean Motivation

In 458 BCE, Agamemnon was first performed. Aeschylus places the unresolved trauma of Iphigenia's sacrifice at Aulis at the very heart of the play. Clytemnestra acts with political might and claims divine backing from Justice, Ruin, and Vengeance.

The Greek chorus describes how Agamemnon ordered Iphigenia to be gagged so she could not curse him before her sacrifice to appease Artemis. In Euripides' play Iphigenia in Aulis and other sources, it is revealed that Agamemnon killed Clytemnestra's first husband Tantalus and forcibly wrenched her nursing infant from her breast.

Clytemnestra outsmarts Agamemnon by compelling him to commit hubris. She makes him walk barefoot over murex-dyed purple tapestries that resemble a river of blood.

A krater by the Dokimasia Painter in Boston shows Agamemnon trapped in a transparent gauzy robe that restricts his arms while Aegisthus and Clytemnestra attack him. After the third blow, Cassandra prophesies the two-footed lioness mating with the wolf Aegisthus.

Retributive Justice and Roman Reception

In Book Eleven of the Odyssey, Agamemnon blames Aegisthus for the bloodbath while noting that Clytemnestra stood by during the twenty years Odysseus was away. Later Roman authors transformed Clytemnestra from a terrifying avenger into a petty housewife driven by sexual jealousy upon seeing Cassandra.

In the late fifth century BCE, a young man brought a lawsuit in the Areopagus accusing his stepmother of poisoning his father after a dinner party with Philoneus. The father lingered for three weeks before dying. The plaintiff referred to her as tēs Klutaimnēstras tautēs to invoke the mythological bad wife.

8. Eurydice

Virgil and Ovid

In 29 BCE, Virgil completed the Georgics. He spends 19 lines describing Orpheus' journey into the Underworld, known as the katabasis. Only six lines cover the ascent and the loss of Eurydice.

In Virgil's Georgics, Aristaeus causes Eurydice's death by trying to assault her, leading her to step on a hidden snake. Ovid shifts the narrative focus by removing the sexual predator Aristaeus. Ovid gives Orpheus a persuasive speech before the rulers of the Underworld.

Ovid's Orpheus tells Persephone that his wife was killed too young by a snake. He appeals to Persephone's own abduction by Hades, threatening to stay and die in the Underworld if he cannot take her back.

Plato and Modern Reclamations

In classical Greece, the story of Alcestis and Admetus was far more prominent than the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Euripides' tragedy Alcestis was first performed in 438 BCE.

Modern retellings reclaim the myth by giving Eurydice her voice back and reframing her second death as a desired escape from an arrogant partner.

In 1925, H.D.'s poem Eurydice was published in her Collected Poems. In 1999, Carol Ann Duffy published The World’s Wife.

In Carol Ann Duffy's poem Eurydice, the protagonist deliberately tricks Orpheus into looking back. She wants to return to the Underworld in peace away from her self-satisfied husband.

Marcel Camus's film Black Orpheus sets the myth in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival in 1959. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, using bossa nova music and featuring a fatal electric cable instead of a snake.

9. Phaedra

Phaedra's story exposes the destructive power of divine vengeance and the cultural obsession with false allegations that obscures real sexual violence.

While Phaedra is universally remembered as a wicked stepmother who falsely accuses her stepson and drives him to death, traditional retellings sanitize Theseus's extensive history of serial rape, forced marriages, and child abduction by omitting them from stage productions and children's books. Roger Lancelyn Green's 1958 book Tales of the Greek Heroes describes Theseus killing villains while completely omitting the rape of those men's daughters, and alters Ariadne's abandonment so she willingly marries Dionysus.

Euripides and the Nurse

In Euripides' play Hippolytus, Phaedra is portrayed not as a villainous seductress, but as an innocent victim crushed by the amoral vengeance of the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite uses Phaedra as collateral damage in a petty revenge plot against Hippolytus, who spurns her worship in favor of Artemis. Phaedra suffers in silence for two years, wishing to die rather than bring shame upon her husband and children.

Desperate to save Phaedra from dying of starvation and heartbreak, the nurse pressures her by arguing that her death will leave her children at the mercy of Hippolytus, the Amazon's bastard son. Once Phaedra confesses her secret love, the nurse directly disobeys instructions and confronts Hippolytus, triggering total disaster.

False Allegations and Racine

Phaedra's false accusation is frequently used to legitimize the myth that women routinely lie about rape. However, statistical data reveals that for every single false allegation made, hundreds of actual rapes occur, the vast majority of which are never reported to the authorities. Home Office figures show false allegations account for about 4 per cent, meaning 96 per cent are considered true, while Office of National Statistics data indicates 85 per cent of victims never report the crime.

Jean Racine's 1677 adaptation Phèdre removes the divine machinery of Greek gods, shifting the tragedy into a deeply human drama driven by sexual jealousy and political survival.

10. Medea

In ancient mythological traditions, Medea was not merely a love-struck girl but a formidable sorceress whose magic was essential to the success of Jason's quest. Ray Harryhausen's 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts diminishes Medea's role by shifting focus to the goddess Hera. Ancient sources like Apollonius of Rhodes' third century BCE epic poem Argonautica depict Medea single-handedly defeating the bronze giant Talos with potions. She also slays the sleepless dragon guarding the golden fleece and provides Jason with protective salves against fire-breathing bulls.

In Apollonius' Argonautica, Medea uses her knowledge of potions and connection to Hades to cause the bronze giant Talos to graze his ankle on a sharp rock, draining his life-fluid ichor.

Heroic Helper and Rhetoric

Medea's terrifying transformation from a brilliant heroic helper into a calculated child-murderer underscores the devastating cost of female betrayal.

Euripides’ tragedy Medea, first performed in 431 BCE at the Dionysia festival in Athens, shocked its original audience by breaking with tradition to make Medea the deliberate murderer of her own children. The play took third place in competition and followed Euripides' lost play Daughters of Pelias from 455 BCE. Historical scholia suggest alternative traditions where Medea's children were killed by vengeful Corinthians or by accident, making Euripides' choice deeply scandalous.

Medea masterfully weaponizes rhetoric, manipulating different characters through carefully assumed personae while concealing her true magical and violent nature. Sixteen lines into Euripides' play, Medea's world falls apart. She adopts a different persona in each conversation.

Feminist Critique and Apotheosis

Addressing the Corinthian chorus, Medea highlights the oppressive reality of ancient Greek marriage. Over 2300 years later, lines from this speech were quoted at suffrage meetings. The speech reflects an era where thirty-five years was the low average life expectancy in the ancient world, partly due to maternal mortality.

Medea tells the chorus that she would rather stand three times in the front line of battle than give birth to a single child.

In Euripides' play, Medea poisons her rival Glauce and King Creon, and then uses a sword to kill her own sons to punish Jason. Fourth century BCE philosopher Aristotle criticized the plot point in his Poetics. A Lucanian calyx-krater from around 400 BCE depicts Medea escaping in her chariot.

At the end of the play, Medea appears high above the stage in a chariot pulled by serpents, holding the bodies of her dead children and prophesying Jason's death.

Thomas Satterwhite Noble painted Margaret Garner in 1867, titled The Modern Medea. Novels by Christa Wolf and Ludmila Ulitskaya featuring Medea figures were published in 1996. Beyoncé's visual album video for Hold Up features imagery of a saffron dress, destruction, and a woman wrestling with whether it is worse to look jealous or crazy.

10 Key Ideas

1. The familiar image of Pandora opening a box stems from a sixteenth-century translation error, transforming a top-heavy storage jar into a portable trap.
2. Penelope has been idealized for millennia for her loyalty, despite spending twenty years separated from Odysseus and orchestrating brilliant deceptions.
3. In early epic and later variant plays, Jocasta appears not merely as an incestuous victim, but as an active political negotiator working to avert civil war.
4. Helen's life story is defined by divine manipulation, forced marriages, and brilliant legal defenses that challenge her role as the instigator of war.
5. Medusa's evolution from an apotropaic guardian to a brutalized monster reflects Western art's persistent tendency to celebrate violence against women.
6. Ancient Amazons fought as a cohesive, highly organized tribe characterized by intense collective loyalty rather than isolated heroic individualism.
7. Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon is driven by unquenchable maternal rage over the sacrificial slaughter of her daughter Iphigenia rather than mere lust.
8. Modern retellings reclaim the myth of Eurydice by giving her her voice back and reframing her second death as a desired escape from an arrogant partner.
9. Phaedra's story exposes the destructive power of divine vengeance and the cultural obsession with false allegations that obscures real sexual violence.
10. Medea's terrifying transformation from a brilliant heroic helper into a calculated child-murderer underscores the devastating cost of female betrayal.