The buzz of the mountain noise and screeches of the eagles soaring above me is not enough to distract me from the nerves I feel from what may occur in the next few hours. Almost a week had passed since my mother had revealed the whereabouts of my father who, of all places, lived at the highest point of the Caucasus mountains. After that interesting conversation with my mother, it felt dishonorable to stay at home knowing where my father was.
I arrive at a small cabin at the top of the mountain.
“Why would someone want to live alone all the way up here,” I thought, as I knocked on the cabin door. An unusually tall man with scars covering his entire body answers the door.
“Are you Prometheus?” I ask. Unconcerned by a lone girl wandering the mountains, the tall man replies “Nice to finally meet you. I’ve been waiting all day for you”.
Confused about how he could’ve known about my arrival, I continue to explain to him that I am his daughter, and his unperplexed reactions tell me he had already known.
“This is our first meeting, but I must ask you a favor,” my father says hastily. “Find my brother Epimetheus, your uncle, and with him, you will find Pandora. Pandora possesses a jar that must be protected from her own curiosity. Find the jar and bring it back to me. The jar must never be opened”.
“Why me?” I say puzzled. “Zeus had forbidden me from leaving this cabin. Please, if the jar is opened humanity and this world will suffer from climatical catastrophe.” Prometheus says frantically. He hands me a map with instructions to find Epimetheus and Pandora, then says “You must leave now. The eagles are coming”.
The quick and utterly unsentimental meeting with my father had left me bewildered, though an innate loyalty motivates me to fulfill his wishes and I proceed to find my uncle Epimetheus.
I arrive at the location the map had led me to. “An olive farm?” I question. From the fields, I see a tall man, familiar in build to that of my fathers. He walks up to me and I spoke.
“Are you Epimetheus? I am Prometheus’ daughter, and he has asked me to bring him a jar Pandora possesses”.
Epimetheus looks at me and says “Prometheus must’ve told you the importance of this jar. He wouldn’t be asking for it without reason”. He then leaves and returns with a jar of olives that appeared ordinary. He hands me the jar and says, “under no circumstance must this jar be opened.”.
I nod and head back to the mountains to my father’s cabin.
I see the cabin before me, and my thoughts are interrupted by a loud screech of a large eagle sitting on the cabin’s windowsill.
Before I know it, the eagle is flying towards me and knocks the jar of olives right out of my hands. As I look up there is no sign of the eagle, but a man holding a bolt of lightning stands before me and opens the jar. The jar bursts open and an endless cloud of fiery smoke escapes, creating a storm above us.
“I have been waiting millenniums for this jar to be opened and now humanity will finally suffer for your father’s betrayal. The blanket protecting this earth will begin to disappear and humanity will endure the heat of Tartarus” says the man.
Without saying anything else, the man is gone in a flash of light and I am left alone in the scorching mountains with the echoing sound of the eagles.
Analysis of The Jar of Olives
Global warming has been an ongoing crisis accelerated by human activity and neglect. It is important for the global population to become aware of how their everyday lifestyle and industrial technology are driving the earth to its own destruction. Hesiod’s Theogony and Works & Days explain the origin of humanity’s suffering and turmoil. This story, The Jar of Olives, is centered around the interpretation of this classical myth, specifically the stories of Why Life is Hard and Pandora in Works & Days and the Theogony respectively. The Jar of Olives dissects the message of these classical myths by also interpreting how the creation of humanity and their existence is the cause for Earth's climatical destruction and human suffering.
Hesiod’s Theogony quotes “And ready-witted Prometheus he [Zeus] bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew as much again every way as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day” (Hesiod, Theogony 511). This is the result of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus, betraying him, and giving the flame back to humanity. In return for Prometheus’ betrayal, Zeus casts him to the Caucasus Mountains where he is chained and tortured by eagles for eternity. This scenario in Hesiod’s Theogony is heavily integrated into The Jar of Olive as the main character travels to the highest points of the Caucasus Mountains where it is said to be the place Zeus had cast away Prometheus. Instead of being held in chains, the story uses a cabin as the place of imprisonment as it is a more fitting and inviting place for the main character to meet her father for the first time. The story even makes reference to Zeus’ eagles torturing Prometheus as he says “You must leave now. The eagles are coming” indicating that it is the time of day in which the eagles will feed on his immortal liver.
In classical myth, Prometheus has historically been portrayed as the creator of humans and protector of their wellbeing, becoming the theft of fire to give humans the best chance of survival. With good intentions for humankind, Prometheus betrays Zeus who then not only incarcerates him to the Caucasus mountain but also orchestrates the creation of Pandora. According to Hesiod’s Works & Days, Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, is gifted Pandora as a punishment for Prometheus’ actions; “when he had finished the sheer, hopeless snare, the Father sent glorious Argus-Slayer [Hermes], the swift messenger of the gods, to take it to Epimetheus as a gift. And Epimetheus did not think on what Prometheus had said to him, bidding him never take a gift of Olympian Zeus, but to send it back for fear it might prove to be something harmful to men. But he took the gift, and afterwards, when the evil thing was already his, he understood” (Hesiod, Works & Days 54). In most mythography of Pandora’s Jar, it is common for the narrative to have Pandora open the jar as she is gifted the virtue of curiosity by Hera; “the woman took off the great lid of the jar (pithos) with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men” (Hesiod, Works & Days 54). In the Jar of Olives, Prometheus is aware of Pandora’s prophecy and requests that his daughter meet with Epimetheus and find the jar before Pandora’s curiosity takes over, as he is forbidden to leave this cabin.
After Prometheus’ daughter brings back the jar of olives from Epimetheus, represented as Pandora’s jar in classical myths, she finds Prometheus in his cabin. This section of The Jar of Olives delivers the most changes to ancient Greek mythography as Pandora is no longer the individual who opens the jar, rather it is the man with the lightning bolt, who undeniably represents Zeus, takes the form of an eagle in efforts to trick Prometheus’ daughter. By trying to trick Zeus once again with the help of his daughter, the odds are not in Prometheus’ favor as Zeus uses his ability to willingly form into another animal similarly to how he abducted the Naiad-nymph, Aigina, who he loved, in the form of an eagle; “Father Zeus now deceitfully changed his form, and his love, before the due season, he flew above River Asopos, the father of a daughter, as an eagle with eye sharp-shining like a bird, as he were now presaging the winged bridal of Aigina.”(Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7.210ff). This scene is used to indicate that one can never outwit Zeus, as Hesiod’s Theogony explains “There’s no way to get around the mind of Zeus, not even Prometheus, that fine son of Iapetos, escaped his heavy anger” (Hesiod, Theogony 511). The story uses symbolic figures such as olives, eagles, and a lightning bolt, Zeus’ identifying characteristics, to signify that the essence of Zeus is always present and that the pressures of the all-knowing Zeus are impossible to overcome.
The classical myth of the creation of Pandora in Hesiod’s Works & Days is the key narrative into understanding why this world is subjected to hardships and suffering. The release of evil and sorrow from Pandora’s jar in the classical myth is used to explain why life is hard at the faults of Prometheus. Prometheus’ determination to improve humanity had backfired as he betrayed Zeus who then claimed humans as undeserving of living in ease. In the context of the story, the predisposition of Pandora opening the jar was “set in stone”, but Prometheus asking his daughter for help changed Pandora’s prophecy, forcing Zeus to take matters into his own hands by opening the jar himself. The Jar of Olives ends with Zeus saying, “The blanket protecting this earth will begin to disappear and humanity will endure the heat of Tartarus”. Zeus declaring that the blanket protecting the earth will disappear is a metaphor for the earth’s atmosphere slowly thinning, driving global warming, hence the earth suffering from the “heat of Tartarus” in which the fire of Tartarus resembles the flames from the sun. Though, as suggested in the story, it is not implied that Zeus is releasing immediate destruction of the earth, rather it is more reasonable to propose that the “evil” that was released from the jar of olives is actually the qualities and attributes that will give humankind the power to drive themselves to earth's climatical destruction.
The current global conditions that humankind is confronted with are at the fault of none other, humans themselves. It is their intelligence, their drive to improve, their means to advance technology, as well as their negligence to care and appreciate the earth, that is the root cause of climate change. It is the multibillion-dollar industries, mass production of single-use plastics, as well as encouraging deforestation, in which all are ideas fabricated with the intent to improve humankind, but as a byproduct issues involving pollution and greenhouse gasses had emerged. Pandora’s jar had released these gifts of intelligence and the drive to succeed, but at the hands of Zeus, these attributes had backfired causing humans to suffer and create a catastrophe to punish Prometheus.
Hesiod’s story of Why Life is Hard in Works & Days ends, “Only Elpis (Hope) remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aigis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds” (Hesiod, Works & Days 54). Pandora, in the classical myths, was unable to break-free the attribute of hope for humankind, the only attribute missing for humans to maybe gain the ability to reverse Zeus’ plague and stop human suffering and climatical catastrophe.
Bibliography
Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb
Classical Library Volume 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914
Nonnus, Dionysiaca. Translated by Rouse, W H D. Leob Classical Library Volumes
344,354,356, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940