MYTH:
After Epimetheus created all the animals from mud, he made the Human. But the Titan was improvident and had gifted the animals with all the claws and the fangs to fight, all the furs and the shells to be protected. He had nothing left to give to the Human. The tiny creature was defenceless. Epimetheus’ brother Prometheus had the idea to gift humanity with divine attributes to compensate his brother's improvidence, making them capable of walking on two legs and giving them the fire he had stolen from Hephaistos. Zeus was irritated and decided to punish the brothers by creating Pandora, with the help of the other gods (Herodotus, Days and Nights). She was the first woman and was sent to the men with a jar full of all the evils from Mount Olympus. But the men remained united, although they were afflicted by illnesses, deaths and other ailments brought by Pandora. Zeus’ plan had not succeeded, at least not to his expectations. Finally, a cruel idea came to him. Although he is an immortal god, Zeus had always juggle between heart-breaking romances and complicated marriages until his last, yet still unfulfilling marriage with Hera. He thought that if men were given the benefits of divine attributes like standing up and using fire, they should suffer the same pain as the gods do, the pains of love. So, he asked Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love to create a love filter that would make every man attracted to Pandora. Discord would result from all the men loving the same woman. Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, dispersed Aphrodite’s filter through a torrential rain that covered the earth.
However, Eros had overheard his mother Aphrodite’s plan with Zeus. God of love and passion, he was moved by the purity of love that had bounded men for so long during the Golden Age. The night before Zeus started off the rain, he stole Ares’s shield and covered a small village of men with it for one day and one night, protecting them from Zeus’s rain. Therefore, a few men remained attracted to one another, in the purest form of love.
When Ares warned Zeus that his shield was stolen, the king of gods soon discovered Eros’ ruse. Outraged, he asked his wife Hera to make the woman Pandora the only human able to carry a child. All men had been reproducing and carrying children since then but because of Zeus’ ultimate punishment, they had to mate with Pandora now. He had made love between men unfruitful. To make sure pure love could never exist again Zeus the loud thundering dispersed the men of the village, untouched by Aphrodite’s filter. Through generations and generations, the filter ran in the blood of many men and their descendants. Following the reproduction of numerous generations, multiple sexual orientations arose. Some men, with pure blood untouched by the love filter, stayed attracted. Most of the men fell in love with women due to their impure blood. Some men were even attracted by both because they were once partially touched by the love filter. To this day, Zeus' punishment is still affecting the Human race since some people are discriminated against for their orientation while some others are struggling to accept or understand their own orientation.
ANALYSIS
This myth is an aetiological myth accounting for the existence of sexual orientations. The text could have been written in ancient times since there are no markers of modernity like in Riordan texts in which the characters use phones and cars for instance (Riordan). But the text doesn’t carry strong markers of the Greek antiquity besides references to divinity like Zeus, Hera or Aphrodite, so the explanation it gives can easily be accepted today. They are more timeless than if they had been set in a very defined time period. However, the text is written making references to ancient writing, like the Homeric epithets used to describe Zeus as “ the cloud-gatherer” (Homer, Iliad 1.510-513)
Based on the myth structures described by Calame, the context of the myth is strongly linked to other myth like the creation of men by Epimetheus and Prometheus (Plato, Protagoras 320d), the myth of Pandora and her box (Hesiod, Works and Days 75-80) or references to Zeus many wives (Hesiod, Theogony 885). As described by Claude Lévi Strauss, and reported in The Semiotics and Pragmatics of Myth by Calame, it’s in relation with other myths that a single myth takes its meaning. This myth takes place in a paradigmatic dimension in which multiple myths are added to complete each other such as the myth of Pandora’s box (Hesiod, Works and Days 75-80) and the myth of Zeus, the father of men and gods (Hesiod, Works and Days 59), who afflict men with another punishment that results in the creation of various sexual orientations. We can also note that this myth makes other cross-myths references by relating how Hera is responsible for making Pandor, the first woman, able to carry children. This myth explains how Hera has “gained” her role as the goddess responsible for women's fertility. Thus, we see that the links created between this myth and other well know myths complete each other. We can also note the links between the myth and reality which can for example explain the capacity of women to bear infants.
To continue with the myth’s narrative structure, it relies on a binary opposition (Calame) between the divine and Human as does the myth of the creation of man by Prometheus and Epimetheus (Plato, Protagoras 320d) as well as the box of Pandora punishment (Hesiod, Works and Days 75-80). This acts as an underlying invariant of the myth that is the key to understanding its meaning. Indeed, sexual orientation is the result of a divine punishment of men. But it’s also an evidence of the divine superiority of men. Indeed, men are given the fire and bipedalism by Prometheus, which are divine characteristics (Hesiod, Works and Days). On top of that, in this myth, they are cursed with an affliction that is described as one that only Gods were suffering from before which is pain of the hearts: they are all falling in love with the same woman. The plan of Zeus is to compensate the divine benefits men received by divine affliction. In the process, it might seem like men are getting closer to a divine status. However, with a more general perspective, we note that the myth narratives revolve around Gods and Titans playing tricks to one another, using their magic and powers with the Humans and their nature (sexual orientation) as the subject of their squabbles. At no point in the story do men act conscientiously, they just are toys under the control of the divinities. Therefore, as The Protagoras (Plato), on which this myth is partly based, this episode shows how the gods are all mighty. It supports the idea that gods are the measure of all things, not men, contrary to the sophist approach (Plato, Theetete).
Finally, regarding the way the myth describes the creation of sexual orientation, it is interesting to note that homosexuality is presented as the earliest orientation. This is an approach that could be either very modern or very ancient. Indeed, homosexuality and bisexuality were not frowned upon in Ancient Greek Culture and many representations or evocation of homosexual relationships are described, and some of them are even famous like the love story between Achilles and Patroclus (Homer, Iliad). It has to be noted that it’s not the only myth explaining sexual orientation. If this myth was mainly about describing how different sexual orientations were created, the Aristophane speech of Plato describes how sexual attraction was the result of a divine punishment as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Calame, Claude. “The Semiotics and Pragmatics of Myth.” A Companion to Greek Mythology, Ken Dowden Niall Livingstone DPhil, 2011, pp. 508–23.
Hesiod, Theogony 885
Hesiod, Works and Days 75-80
Hesiod, Works and Days 59
Homer, Iliad 1.510-513
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, et al. The Raw and the Cooked (Mythologiques). University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Plato, Protagoras 320d
Plato, Theetete
Plato, The Symposium 189c-193e
Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1). 1st ed., Disney-Hyperion, 2006.
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