"What! that young Titan!" he cried. "Well, I will punish him in a way
that will make him wish I had shut him up in the prison-house with his
kinsfolk. But as for those puny men, let them keep their fire. I will
make them ten times more miserable than they were before they had it."
Of course it would be easy enough to deal with Prometheus at any time,
and so Jupiter was in no great haste about it. He made up his mind to
distress mankind first; and he thought of a plan for doing it in a very
strange, roundabout way.
In the first place, he ordered his blacksmith Vulcan, whose forge was in
the crater of a burning mountain, to take a lump of clay which he gave
him, and mold it into the form of a woman. Vulcan did as he was bidden;
and when he had finished the image, he carried it up to Jupiter, who
was sitting among the clouds with all the Mighty Folk around him. It was
nothing but a mere lifeless body, but the great blacksmith had given it
a form more perfect than that of any statue that has ever been made.
"Come now!" said Jupiter, "let us all give some goodly gift to this
woman;" and he began by giving her life.
Then the others came in their turn, each with a gift for the marvelous
creature. One gave her beauty; and another a pleasant voice; and another
good manners; and another a kind heart; and another skill in many arts;
and, lastly, some one gave her curiosity. Then they called her Pandora,
which means the all-gifted, because she had received gifts from them
all.
Pandora was so beautiful and so wondrously gifted that no one could help
loving her. When the Mighty Folk had admired her for a time, they gave
her to Mercury, the light-footed; and he led her down the mountain side
to the place where Prometheus and his brother were living and toiling
for the good of mankind. He met Epimetheus first, and said to him:
"Epimetheus, here is a beautiful woman, whom Jupiter has sent to you to
be your wife."
[Illustration: "'EPIMETHEUS, HERE IS A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.'"]
Prometheus had often warned his brother to beware of any gift that
Jupiter might send, for he knew that the mighty tyrant could not be
trusted; but when Epimetheus saw Pandora, how lovely and wise she was,
he forgot all warnings, and took her home to live with him and be his
wife.
Pandora was very happy in her new home; and even Prometheus, when he saw
her, was pleased with her loveliness. She had brought with her a golden
casket, which Jupiter had given her at parting, and which he had told
her held many precious things; but wise Athena, the queen of the air,
had warned her never, never to open it, nor look at the things inside.
"They must be jewels," she said to herself; and then she thought of how
they would add to her beauty if only she could wear them. "Why did
Jupiter give them to me if I should never use them, nor so much as look
at them?" she asked.
The more she thought about the golden casket, the more curious she was
to see what was in it; and every day she took it down from its shelf and
felt of the lid, and tried to peer inside of it without opening it.
"Why should I care for what Athena told me?" she said at last. "She is
not beautiful, and jewels would be of no use to her. I think that I will
look at them, at any rate. Athena will never know. Nobody else will
ever know."
She opened the lid a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there
was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again,
out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt
and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. They
fluttered for a little while about the room, and then flew away to find
dwelling-places wherever there were homes of men. They were diseases and
cares; for up to that time mankind had not had any kind of sickness, nor
felt any troubles of mind, nor worried about what the morrow might bring
forth.
These creatures flew into every house, and, without any one seeing them,
nestled down in the bosoms of men and women and children, and put an end
to all their joy; and ever since that day they have been flitting and
creeping, unseen and unheard, over all the land, bringing pain and
sorrow and death into every household.
If Pandora had not shut down the lid so quickly, things would have gone
much worse. But she closed it just in time to keep the last of the evil
creatures from getting out. The name of this creature was Foreboding,
and although he was almost half out of the casket, Pandora pushed him
back and shut the lid so tight that he could never escape. If he had
gone out into the world, men would have known from childhood just what
troubles were going to come to them every day of their lives, and they
would never have had any joy or hope so long as they lived.
And this was the way in which Jupiter sought to make mankind more
miserable than they had been before Prometheus had befriended them.