The Role Of Pandora In Hesiod

Assignment #1

A) The excerpt from Hesiod’s text illustrates different characters who serve a myriad of purposes. There are 3 main characters in the text Zeus, Hephaestus and Hermes. Zeus ordered the creation of the first woman, Pandora, and commanded the Olympians to present Pandora with gifts. Hephaestus crafted Pandora because of Zeus’s orders. Hermes provided Pandora with “a deceitful nature,” (Hesiod n.p) and delivered her to Epimetheus. There are other characters with minor roles in the text. The most important character is Zeus, because he was orchestrating the whole event. He was assigning duties to different Olympians and all the characters in the text were just following his command.

B) The scene on the vase shows only a part of

The person left of center is facing the man on the far left and it looks like they are conversing. On the basis of Hesiod’s text people depicted on this vase, from right to left, are Pandora, Hephaestus, Hermes and Zeus. There are numerous attributes that allow the identification of these characters. Pandora in Hesiod’s text, is being made using mud, which might answer why only a part of the woman is shown on the vase. Furthermore, the woman depicted on the vase is wearing a crown and Hesiod’s text mentions “crowned her (Pandora) head with spring flowers,” these two things allow me to identify this woman as Pandora. The second person from the right looks like he is sculpting Pandora and in Hesiod’s text Zeus orders Hephaestus to make Pandora thus this person might be Hephaestus. Moreover, this person is holding a hammer, a tool

The vase also illustrates a similar scene. The form used by the artist has a colossal impact on how an artist chooses to tell a story. In this case to depict the story on the vase the artist had to overlook numerous characters depicted in Hesiod’s text. Additionally, the artist has to provide the figures with distinct attributes so the audience can recognize them. In a poem the writer is more elaborate, so the audience can portray the story more vividly. The advantages of using a painting are that the reader doesn’t need to know the language to comprehend the scene and the reader can understand the whole scene much more quickly. The limitations are that each scene cannot be elaborated sufficiently which might cause many characters to be forgotten from the myths. Advantages of a poem are that the scene can be described very elaborately and more characters can be incorporated in the story while the disadvantage is that metaphors in the poems might be convoluted and the audience needs to know the language to comprehend the poem