In Hesiod’s Pandora story, hope remained inside the container after the other contents escaped. The Greek term is elpis, commonly translated as “hope,” and it is the final item named in the episode.
Works and Days says Pandora opened the container and released the destructive conditions that afflict human life. Hope remained behind when she closed it, which gives the ending its famous ambiguity: hope may be preserved for humanity, or it may be withheld within the container. The text itself does not settle every later philosophical interpretation.
Another frequent error is saying that hope entered the world after Pandora opened the container. Hesiod’s wording instead places it inside at the end of the episode. Modern retellings often make hope an explicit consolation, but ancient readers debated whether elpis was beneficial, deceptive, or simply one more condition kept away from humans.