Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Epimetheus.
The gallery
Epimetheus and Pandora
El Greco, c. 1605
Paired wooden sculptures by El Greco of Epimetheus and Pandora as Adam-and-Eve analogues — the afterthought brother and the gifted bride set face to face. The Toledo pair makes Hesiod's marriage visible as a Renaissance meditation on the first human mistake.
Pandora Offers the Jar to Epimetheus
Paolo Farinati, 16th century
Veronese-school drawing in which Pandora presents the fatal jar to Epimetheus, the brother who accepted Zeus's gift against Prometheus' warning. Farinati freezes the moment before the lid lifts — afterthought already too late.
Epimetheus Opening Pandora's Box
Anton Tischbein, 1771
Oil by Anton Tischbein in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (KMS1006): Epimetheus himself pries open Pandora's box while ills pour into the world. The canvas shifts Hesiod's agency onto the husband who looked too late.
Epimetheus Receives Pandora
John Flaxman, c. 1817
Outline drawing by John Flaxman for Hesiod's Works and Days: Hermes delivers Pandora to Epimetheus despite Prometheus' warning against gifts from the gods. Neoclassical line turns the brother's acceptance into a cool, fatal handshake.
Prometheus and Epimetheus before Pandora
Hermann Julius Schlösser, 1878
Academic oil from Berlin's Nationalgalerie: Prometheus and Epimetheus stand before the newly fashioned Pandora, the foresighted brother already uneasy and the afterthought brother already won. Schlösser stages the gift that will undo Epimetheus as a tableau of two temperaments.
In play
Epimetheus
Greek epimētheus means afterthought — Prometheus' brother whose name still labels the wisdom that comes too late, after the jar is open.
Pandora
Epimetheus' modern afterlife is inseparable from Pandora's — the husband who accepted the gifted bride, and whose failure keeps the jar story alive.