Pandora's Jar: Women In The Greek Myths Quotes
"It’s obviously a story which finds its echoes with Eve."
"Eve did at least listen to the snake and eat the thing she’d been told was dangerous."
"Pandora has been particularly ill-served by history, even relative to Eve."
"Quite aside from anything else – as anyone who has ever swept a kitchen floor will cheerlessly testify – lids aren’t always tightly fastened."
"The guiding principle when searching for the cause of everything wrong in the world has been, all too often: cherchez la femme."
"The ancients, it seems, were as capable as any modern advertising executive of manipulating a narrative to suit their own purposes."
"So did Erasmus confuse the two women – Pandora and Psyche – or confuse the two similar-sounding words: jar – pithos, and box – puxos?"
"Hope is intrinsically positive in English, but in Greek (and the same with the Latin equivalent, spes) it is not."
"Oedipus and Jocasta do not have that, so she is that rarest and most dangerous of things: a woman who doesn’t become invisible to men even as she ages."
"I suspect we don’t see her reflected back at us from paintings because she has committed the ultimate sin against art: she is an older woman."
"Perhaps it’s not surprising that Pandora’s role as our ancestor has been largely forgotten today."
"The fixation on Oedipus sucks all the light and air out of the rest of the Theban cycle."
"An ungenerous person might wonder if Arthur has done quite well out of this exchange, since he will presumably get to keep the cash and might lose a wife who has already provoked in him a visibly angry response."
"We can’t care as much about every single person alive as we do for our loved ones."
"This is perhaps also why Oedipus doesn’t appear in The Phoenician Women until 200 lines before the end."
"In Greek myth, hanging is usually the method of suicide employed by virginal girls."
"Her name on this pot is given as Anesidora, meaning ‘she who sends up gifts’."
"She is also all-gifted, insofar as many gods have contributed to her creation, giving her different qualities and skills."
"If Helen’s birth is a little peculiar, it is her childhood – when she is kidnapped – that is more upsetting for a modern audience."
"Surely we would all stop short of blaming a child for her own abduction?"
"The simplicity of the plan was impressive."
"Paris was simply given the job of deciding which goddess should take home the coveted trophy."
"In fact, the more we try to understand her, the more she seems to elude us: Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta, Helen of joy, Helen of slaughter."
"The only metamorphosis that Ovid mentions is the changing of her hair into snakes."
"Her lethal stare is a localized peril: avoid her and you would never be in danger, because she keeps herself far away from mortals."
"If you’re looking for a better metaphor for virulent misogyny, I’m afraid I don’t have one."
"The notion of a child being more beautiful than all other women or girls, and this being a valid reason to kidnap her, is a deeply unsavoury one."
"A Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BCE, tells us Helen was ten years old at the time of this abduction."
"But this sells the speech rather short."
"Greek lamentations often commemorate the dead by focusing on how the living will struggle to cope without them."
"Be thankful we only want equality, and not payback."
"She is a monster, but also a deeply desirable woman."
"Medusa is a warrior queen who ruled the Libyans who lived near Lake Triton."
"No wonder Medusa’s name means ‘ruler’ or ‘guardian’."
"Amazons were ‘A bunch of golden-shielded, silver-axed, man-loving, boy-killing women.’"
"The Greeks were fascinated by these women: barbarians as opposed to Greeks, who often fought against Greeks."
"The heroic mindset for the Greeks who fight at Troy is intrinsically selfish and self-absorbed."
"Unlike these men, Amazons fight alongside one another."
"These women aren’t fighting because they’ve been attacked and they have to, they’re fighting because they’re warriors and they were born to."
"No wonder Homer called them antianeirai, ‘equivalent to men’."
"Penthesilea achieves what many warriors strive to achieve throughout the Iliad: personal fame and a glorious death."
"Clytemnestra is the ultimate bad wife, in the same way that Medea is the ultimate bad mother."
"Clytemnestra explains to the chorus that Troy has fallen."
"Agamemnon had filled his cup with evil deeds, she says, and now he has come home and drained the dregs."
"His balance is impeded because he cannot use his arms to steady himself."
"The wholesome pursuit has been twisted to murderous ends."
"I tell you what, if you can overthrow me, you can rule this place."
"He’s the one you should have banished, she says."
"I rule the palace, the city, its people, and so do you."
"Let no woman now believe a man who makes her promises, may no woman hope that her man's words are true."
"In spite of what he says in this moment of anger, Hippolytus does keep his word. The problem is that Phaedra believes him when he says he will not."
"A woman is filled with fear, she is a coward when it comes to war. But mistreat her in the bedroom, and no one is more bloodthirsty."
"I would have been envied by everyone. But now that sweet thought is dead."
"She is a terrifying woman and no one who engages in hostilities with her will have an easy victory."
"My heart has left me, women, looking at their bright eyes. I can't do it. Farewell to my earlier plans."
"If you hurt her, she will make you regret it."
"But anger, the cause of all evils among mortals, is stronger than my resolution."
"It’s different though, for me and you. Because you are in your own city, your father and friends nearby. Me, I have no one."
"What is wrong with me? Am I willing to have my enemies laugh at me, unpunished?"
"Penelope, we can see, is more than a match for her father. And she seems to have found the right husband in Odysseus, whether he won her by speed of foot or speed of thought."
"Penelope has been idealized for millennia for her patience, endurance and loyalty during the twenty-year period while her husband is away."
"Penelope’s wifely virtues as we see them in Homer’s Odyssey are being a single mother and being chaste."
"Penelope is the wife of the hero so she must resemble a goddess?"
"Penelope is almost always shown sitting down."
"Weaving is not something you can unravel quickly... Penelope has effectively sentenced herself to years of hard labour."
"Penelope is an enigma, praised by men who largely don’t know her as the ideal wife."
"The shroud which Penelope made has not been used as a winding sheet... the shroud was for him, and the other suitors, and the slave-women, all killed by Odysseus and Telemachus."
"Penelope is not unknowable by accident. Homer has deliberately shown her opaquely."