In Hesiod’s Pandora myth, hope stayed inside the vessel after everything else escaped.
In Works and Days, Pandora opens the container and releases destructive troubles into the human world. The text then says that only hope remains inside after Pandora closes the lid. This detail has generated centuries of debate because the Greek word elpis can refer to expectation or anticipation, not only the modern emotional idea of optimism.
The myth does not present the surviving contents as a simple list of named spirits in the way many modern summaries do. Later retellings often describe the released contents as evils, illnesses, and hardships, while treating hope as the final remaining presence.
The English expression “Pandora’s box” is also based on a later translation tradition. Hesiod’s vessel was a pithos, a large storage jar, but the moral structure of the story remains the same: trouble escapes, while hope remains within.