“Opening Pandora’s box” is one of the most familiar phrases borrowed from Greek mythology. It means unleashing a flood of troubles that cannot be put back. But the story behind the phrase is stranger than most people realize. In the earliest version, there was no box at all but a large clay jar. It is not clear where the jar came from or who filled it. And the single thing left inside when the lid went back on — Hope — has puzzled readers for more than two and a half thousand years. Was Hope a blessing kept safe for humanity, or one more evil, and the cruellest of all?
Hesiod’s Account
The oldest and most important source is Hesiod’s Works and Days, a poem of practical advice for farmers written around 700 BCE. Hesiod explains why life is hard. Once, he says, the tribes of men lived on the earth “free from evils, without hard toil and grievous diseases that bring death to men.” Then the woman Pandora, sent by Zeus as punishment for the theft of fire, “took the great lid from the jar with her hands and scattered all these, and devised grievous cares for men.”
Only Elpis (Hope) remained inside, “in an unbreakable home under the lip of the jar,” and did not fly out, because Pandora put the lid back on “by the plans of aegis-bearing Zeus, the cloud-gatherer.”
“But countless other sorrows wander among men,” Hesiod continues, “for the earth is full of evils and the sea is full. Diseases come upon men by day, and others by night, of their own accord, bringing evils to mortals silently, since wise Zeus took away their voice.”
That is the whole of it: a few lines, ambiguous at every turn.
A Jar, Not a Box
The Greek word Hesiod uses is pithos. A pithos was a large storage jar, often as tall as a person, partly buried in the ground and used for keeping grain, wine, oil, or water. Such jars have been excavated throughout the Greek world, some from the Bronze Age palaces of Crete. They were also sometimes used for burials. A pithos was a symbol of household abundance — and also, in some contexts, of the dead.
The “box” came in the sixteenth century. The humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam, retelling the story in his Adagia (1508), wrote pyxis — a small box or casket — instead of pithos. He may have confused Pandora’s story with that of Psyche, who is given a box (pyxis) to carry out of the underworld and is warned not to open it. Erasmus’s work was enormously influential, and the box became standard in European art and language. Painters from Rossetti to Waterhouse depicted Pandora with an ornate casket that fits neatly in her hands — far from the massive earthenware vessel Hesiod imagined.
Where Did the Jar Come From?
Hesiod does not say. The Works and Days does not state that Zeus gave Pandora the jar, or that she brought it with her; she simply opens it. Several explanations were offered:
- A wedding gift. Later tradition assumed the jar was a gift from the gods, sent with her as a dowry of troubles.
- Epimetheus’s household. Some scholars think the jar was already in the house of Epimetheus, her husband, where the evils had been stored away from humankind — and Pandora, as the new wife, opened it.
- A jar of blessings. An entirely different version, recorded by the fable-writer Babrius (second century CE), says Zeus gathered all good things into a jar and gave it to a man. The man, curious, opened it, and the blessings flew away to the gods. Only Hope remained, which is why humans have Hope alone of all good things.
Why Did Pandora Open It?
Modern retellings usually make Pandora’s curiosity the cause: she was told never to open the box but could not resist. That motive is not in Hesiod. He gives no prohibition and no explanation. Pandora simply lifts the lid. The disaster is Zeus’s plan, and she is its instrument.
The motif of forbidden curiosity came later, influenced by stories such as Psyche’s box, Lot’s wife, and Eve’s apple. The Victorians especially loved the image of Pandora as a beautiful woman overcome by her own inquisitiveness.
What Came Out?
Hesiod does not list the evils in detail. He names “toil,” “grievous diseases that bring death,” and “countless sorrows,” and he describes diseases wandering the earth silently. Later writers expanded the list. Common candidates in post-classical retellings include sickness, old age, death, labour, madness, vice, greed, envy, and war.
The most telling detail is the silence of the diseases. Zeus “took away their voice” so that they arrive unannounced. Humans cannot hear sickness coming.
The Problem of Hope
The deepest puzzle is Hope. Why was it in the jar at all, and what does it mean that it stayed there?
Reading 1: Hope as a blessing kept for humanity. The evils escaped into the world, but Hope stayed with us, in the house, available as consolation. This is the most popular modern interpretation and is often retold as a comforting moral: whatever troubles life brings, we still have hope.
Reading 2: Hope as one more evil, kept from humanity. If everything else in the jar was evil, perhaps Hope was too. The Greek elpis is not necessarily positive; it means “expectation” and can refer to fearful anticipation as well as hopeful longing. Hesiod elsewhere in the Works and Days speaks of “empty hope” as something that brings nothing good to the idle man. On this reading, Hope — or foreboding — was kept away from humans, which is a mercy: humans do not know the evils that are coming.
Reading 3: Hope as the worst evil, released to torment us. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human (1878), argued that Zeus deliberately left Hope with humanity as the worst evil of all, “because it prolongs the torments of men.” Hope keeps humans going even when they should give up, and so makes them suffer longer.
Reading 4: Hope as blind hope. In Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, Prometheus says he gave humans “blind hopes” to stop them foreseeing their own deaths. Hope in this sense is a necessary illusion — a gift that makes mortal life bearable precisely by hiding its truth.
None of these readings can be proven. The ambiguity may be the point: Hope is both what sustains humans and what deceives them.
The Jar and the Good Life
For Hesiod, the Pandora story explains why a farmer must work. The gods, he says, “keep hidden” the livelihood of men. Before Prometheus, a man could have worked for one day and had enough for a year. Now the fields must be ploughed, the seed sown, the harvest gathered, and the stores guarded. The storage jar itself — the pithos in every farmhouse, where the year’s grain was kept — becomes a symbol of this new condition. The same vessel that should hold plenty instead held evils.
The Phrase Today
“Pandora’s box” entered English in the late sixteenth century and has been used ever since for any action that sets loose unforeseen troubles. It is a favourite of politicians and journalists warning against legal precedents, scientific experiments, and new technologies. Its enduring power lies in the image: a lid that cannot be put back, a release that cannot be undone — and, at the bottom, the one thing that stayed behind.
Last reviewed: September 2026.