Hesiod In The Theogony And Works And Days Analysis

Myth is a primeval way through which every culture defines its character and offers a way to understand the world. Humans use myth to describe and understand “archetypal or universal significance” (Cupitt, 1997, p.5) and to establish their perception of cultural experiences. Different cultures have their own myths that systemise their human experience as “one of the functions of myth is to convert numinous indefiniteness into nominal definiteness and to make what is uncanny familiar and addressable” (Blumenberg, 1985, p.25) in relation to their immediate context.
Greek, Egyptian and the Near East are the foundation of Western civilisation. Although myths may come from the fragments of history, they deal with large themes that correspond with …show more content…
The poem by Hesiod in the Theogony and Works and Days describes the gift from Zeus, the “all gifted” Pandora the first woman. She is given a Pithos (jar/box) and ordered never to open it under any circumstances however due to the innate woman’s curiosity she opens the jar, releasing all the evils of the world followed by the last spirit named Elpis, commonly known as hope. However before these events, Prometheus orders his son Deucalion to build an ark to save himself and his wife Pyrrha after prophesising the flood Zeus would starting to cleanse the world of evils affecting human kind. After the flood Deucalion and Pyrrha visit the oracle of Themis who instructs them to ‘throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder’. They understand mother to be Gaia (earth) and her bones to be rocks, Deucalion creating the first men and Pyrrha the first women. The flood myth in Greek mythology reflects the Greek’s beliefs that the gods when disobeyed will turn their anger on humans, which is a common element amongst the different flood myths. This myth illuminates why the Greeks built temples for the gods and held sacrifices, to honour the gods and to please