| Pandora's Box | |
 | |
|---|---|
| Biographical Information | |
| Formal Name: | Pandora's Jar |
| Created By: | The Gods |
| Affiliations: | |
| Physical Description | |
| Size: | 1 Ft. X 1Ft. |
| Episode Information | |
| First appearance: | Little Box of Horrors |
The box is historically linked to Pandora and the misery she unleashed onto the world.
Appearance[]
The box is a small, golden compartment with five flat sides that have a red gem in each center. Small golden ornaments decorate the top and bottom of the box that also double as a stand. The box is shown to open from the top.
Role in the Series[]
When Archie and Atlanta are cleaning out a storage room, Archie finds a spear that belonged to Achilles but also found Pandora's box. Unaware of the box's mythology, Archie opened the box, freeing Hope and the Seeper.
Mythology[]
In Classical Greek mythology dating to Hesiod, Pandora was the first human woman created by the deities, specifically by Hephaestus and Athena on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related the Pandora myth, each of the deities helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mold her out of earth as part of the punishment of humanity for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, and all of them joined in offering her "seductive gifts." Pandora was then given the box as a wedding gift but was specifically told to never open it. Having great curiosity, Pandora was not able to keep from opening the box for long and great miseries escaped and plagued humanity from then on.
According to the Hesiodic myth, however, instead of giving bountiful gifts, Pandora opened a jar, in modern accounts sometimes mistranslated as "Pandora's box", releasing all the evils of humanity—although the particular evils, aside from plagues and diseases, are not specified in detail by Hesiod—leaving only Hope inside once she had closed it again. She opened the jar out of simple curiosity and not as a malicious act.
Trivia[]
- The box is mythically known to have been a wedding gift from the deities. Pandora was specifically told to never open the box, but she had been purposely given great curiosity which forced her to set free all of the great miseries that would haunt humanity as punishment for both her own failure for giving into temptation and the sins that men had committed towards the gods.