Written by Arianna North Castell
The creation of man is often spoken of, calling to mind the famed moment on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where Adam lifts his finger to almost touch God’s. It is hardly a concept shrouded in mystery. Less often discussed is the creation of woman—a phrase that carries none of the same familiarity, no cultural hallmark that conjures an image. So, what can we think of when we turn our minds to the first woman? Each culture offers its own version, but their importance is singular. Man, we find, is created in his own right, while woman is created second, almost as an artefact: a manufactured solution, or even a counter-gift, rather than a co-originating human. When a woman possesses agency, she is condemned for it. These are more than stories merely describing women; they are foundational scripts through which societies have long rationalised gender hierarchy.
To the Ancient Greeks, the first woman was named Pandora. Her creation is detailed in Hesiod’s Theogony:
Forthwith he made an evil thing for men as the price of fire… For from her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.
To punish Prometheus for his theft of fire, the gods create Pandora, a ‘kalon kakon’, often translated as ‘beautiful evil’, who is then married to his brother and famously opens a jar that releases evil into the world. What is interesting is that women are created with no attempt to be a counterpart to man, but as foils. Even her title as kalon kakon is telling in its translation—the words are exact oxymorons. They would be better translated as ‘good/bad’ or ‘beautiful/ugly’, but her positive qualities are seen to be physical, and her negatives are moral. This distinction does not exist in the Greek; it is inherited from the misogynistic values that shaped both Hesiod’s myth and its later interpretations. In Pandora, a woman’s worth is measured by her appearance, while her inner self—her intelligence or morality—must somehow be flawed. These ideals may begin with Pandora, but they persist through the genos (race) she inaugurates: womankind itself.
It is clear that the idea of woman as not only “the Other,” but as an inferior other, remained deeply entrenched in Hesiod’s society. His near contemporary, Semonides, echoes and expands upon it in his Catalogue of Women:
From the start, the gods made women different.
One type is from a pig–a hairy sow
whose house is like a rolling heap of filth;
and she herself, unbathed, in unwashed clothes,
reposes on the shit-pile, growing fat.
Another type the gods made from a fox:
pure evil, and aware of everything.
This woman misses nothing: good or bad,
she notices, considers, and declares
that good is bad and bad is good. Her mood
changes from one moment to the next.
One type is from a dog–a no-good bitch,
a mother through and through; she wants to hear
everything, know everything, go everywhere,
and stick her nose in everything, and bark
whether she sees anyone or not.
[…]
Another loathsome, miserable type
is from a weasel: undesirable
in every way–un-charming, un-alluring.
She’s sex-crazed, too; but any man who climbs
aboard her will get seasick. And she steals
from neighbors, and from sacrificial feasts.
Another type a horse with flowing mane
gave birth to. She avoids all kinds of work
and hardship; she would never touch a mill
or lift a sieve, or throw the shit outside,
[…]
For Zeus made this the greatest pain of all
and locked us in a shackle hard as iron
and never to be broken
Here Semonides turns misogyny into taxonomy, classifying women by animal origins and measuring their worth entirely through the service they provide, or fail to provide, to men. Each “type” is defined through domestic, moral, or sexual inadequacy. The effect is complete dehumanisation: woman is no longer a moral agent, but a species of problem. The performance context must be highlighted: this catalogue of women would have been performed in the symposium, where male listeners are invited to oscillate between disgust and desire. The poem’s “dirty joke” structure arouses and then condemns, reaffirming male identity through mockery. It reads as a continuation of Hesiod’s genos of women—each type an elaboration of Pandora’s “beautiful evil,” a being created by Zeus as punishment. In Semonides’ vision, the myth hardens into a moral rule: woman is not merely different from man but “the greatest pain of all,” a burden men can neither resist nor escape.
Many of us will be more familiar with the biblical creation of woman: Eve, created from Adam’s rib. Here, woman again can be seen as supplementary to man, created so that man would not be alone. Eve is described as ‘ezer kenegdô’, commonly translated as ‘helper/helpmate/aid fit for him [Adam]’. Yet recent scholarship argues that this translation fails to capture the meaning of original Hebrew. Far from denoting subordination, ezer kenegdô expresses parity: Eve was created not as an assistant, but as a power equal to man. The term ezer merges two ancient roots: one meaning “to rescue or save,” and the other “to be strong.” Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the noun ezer appears twenty-one times, most often in reference to divine strength:
Happy are you, Israel! Who is like you,
a people delivered by the Lord,
The shield of your strength (ʿezreka)
and the sword of your majesty (ga’avah).
Deuteronomy 33:29
Similarly, the second term, kenegdô, is only mentioned in the Hebrew Bible once, but in later Mishnaic Hebrew the related word keneged means “equal” or “corresponding to.” There is, as R. David Freedman notes, no philological basis for translating it as “fit” or “appropriate.” Together, the phrase ezer kenegdô conveys not inferiority but equivalence and balance—Eve is a counterpart of equal strength. Over time, however, linguistic shifts blurred the distinction between “to save” and “to help,” reducing the sense of power to mere assistance. This erosion, reinforced by patriarchal interpretation and translation, transformed an image of equality into one of subservience, shaping how later societies imagined women’s place in both scripture and the society it guided.
It would be remiss to discuss both Pandora and Eve without addressing their roles as bringers of doom. Pandora opens her jar, releasing into the world every malady before closing it to trap hope inside. Eve takes the fruit that God expressly forbade and shares it with Adam, ensuring their joint fall. All evil—plague, pain, death, work, and toil—is traced back to these women. Blame sits at the centre of their creation. They embody what happens when women exercise agency—Eve takes; Pandora opens. Both acts stem from curiosity and decision, not innate malice, but the texts would have you believe that as women they are innate malice. These myths teach that when women act, the world suffers; but read differently, they also reveal the fear that underlies such stories—the fear of women who think, choose, and move of their own accord.
Pandora and Eve are both first women in a race of womankind in two cultural traditions that still capture the modern world – each shaped by a vision of woman as secondary, suspect, or dangerous when she acts. These narratives have long outlived the worlds that produced them, forming part of the intellectual and moral foundations on which later societies built their ideas of gender and hierarchy. To revisit them now is not to dismiss their value, but to recognise how deeply they have shaped the assumptions we still inherit. By reading them closely, we are reminded that the subordination they describe is not natural or eternal but constructed—and that acknowledging its origins is vital in recognising how it continues to persist today.
Bibliography
Arnson Svarlien, Diane. Trans. “Women,” by Semonides of Amorgos (Poem 7). 1995. Diotima: Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World. Web Archive, 18 Feb. 2019. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20190218234613/http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/sem_7.shtml
Freedman, R. David. “Woman, a Power Equal to Man: ʿEzer kĕnegdô.” Biblical Archaeology Review 9, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1983): 56–58.
Haynes, Natalie. “Pandora.” Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, Series 7, Episode 2. BBC Radio 4. Broadcast Tue 25 May 2021, 11:30 (UK).
Hesiod. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914. Available at https://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodTheogony.html
Morgan, Teresa. “The Wisdom of Semonides fr. 7.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 51 (2005): 72–85.
Osborne, Robin. “The Use of Abuse: Semonides 7.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 47 (2001): 47–64.
Zeitlin, Froma I. “Signifying Difference: The Myth of Pandora.” In Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Alt. ed. in Routledge’s Women in Antiquity reader, 2002.).
Featured Image Credit: “Alexandre Cabanel – Pandora [1873]” by Gandalf’s Gallery is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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