In Greek mythology, hope remains in Pandora’s jar after all the troubles escape.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes Pandora opening a storage jar that releases the harmful conditions affecting human life. The account says that only elpis, commonly translated as “hope,” remains inside when Pandora shuts the vessel again. The Greek term can have a more debated meaning, but “hope” is the standard English rendering and the familiar conclusion of the myth.
The story is often summarized as though hope escaped into the world, but Hesiod’s wording emphasizes that it was left inside the jar. This has prompted long-running interpretations: hope may be a consolation preserved for humanity, or it may be another ambiguous feature of Zeus’s punishment. Later retellings commonly call the vessel a box because of translation history and artistic convention.
Pandora’s story appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony, although the fullest account of the jar is in Works and Days.