Scatter-brained Titan son of Iapetus, 'from the first a mischief to men who eat bread': forgetting his brother Prometheus' warning never to accept a gift from Olympian Zeus, he took in the moulded maiden — and the opening of her great jar ended mankind's life without ills.1
An Oceanid bore him to the Titan Iapetus, in a brood of brothers in whom the fates of gods and men were knotted: stout-hearted Atlas, outrageous Menoetius, Prometheus subtle and shifting in counsel, and scatter-brained Epimetheus. Where his brother's name means Forethought, his means Afterthought — and Hesiod hangs the whole story of mankind's ruin on that difference. He is last-named of the four brothers in Hesiod's list; Apollodorus keeps all four, while Hyginus' preface counts only three, dropping Menoetius. His mother is Clymene in Hesiod and in Hyginus, Asia in Apollodorus.2
Prometheus had warned him plainly: never take a gift of Olympian Zeus, but send it back, for fear it prove some harm to men. Then the Father sent the glorious Argus-Slayer, swift messenger of the gods, leading the maiden the gods had fashioned as a gift to Epimetheus — and Epimetheus did not think on what Prometheus had said. He took the gift; and afterwards, when the evil thing was already his, he understood.3
Before that day, Hesiod says, the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills, hard toil and heavy sickness. But once she was under Epimetheus' roof, the woman took the great lid off the jar with her hands and scattered all that was inside it, and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained within, under the rim of the great jar — and countless plagues now wander silent among mankind, for Zeus took away their voice.4
The later mythographers make the union issue in a line. Apollodorus calls Pyrrha the daughter of Epimetheus and of Pandora, the first woman fashioned by the gods; Hyginus makes the marriage explicit, giving Pandora in wedlock to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother, with Pyrrha as their child; and Ovid, telling the flood, needs only a patronymic — Pyrrha is 'Epimethis', the daughter of Epimetheus. Through her, the heedless Titan stands grandfather to Hellen, name-giver of the Hellenes.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
