Myth Of Pandora And The Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite

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Recommended: Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days - “The Creation of Pandora”

According to the ancient myths and the secondary sources read throughout this course in relation to women, it is suggested that women in ancient Greece were treated as less than their male counterparts because of the contrast present in being both praised and abhorred for their innate sexuality. This innate sexuality is seen as uncontrollable specific to negative traits associated with it like deception and madness, which manifested itself in enforced ideals and a patriarchal system that feared women. This fear of the female nature led to men controlling them and was reinforced in daily life and ritualistic practices. This assumption is supported by the myths Hesiod’s Myth of Pandora and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite as well as the secondary readings of The Daily Life of the Greek gods by Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne and Cultic Models of the Female: Rites of Dionysus and Demeter by Froma Zeitlin. Hesiod’s Myth of Pandora depicts a woman named Pandora who basically brought all negative aspects of life into Greece. Zeus made her as a punishment for Prometheus going against his wishes and stealing fire for mankind in an effort to create something that would “give them an affliction in which they will all delight as they embrace their own misfortune”(Hesiod 38). As …show more content…

Even Aphrodite, the patron goddess of love and sex, is a virgin until she succumbs to pleasure and copulates with Anchises. By ideologically supporting enforced virginity, women are forced to devote their time to God, family, and domesticity, ensuring that they do not stray from their husband. With this enforcement of monogamy, sexuality has to be a secret for women, because they have obvious displays of infidelity in pregnancy. Thus, limiting the sexual power that women have in a way that men no longer need to fear it; they don’t have to fear something they have control

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