In Hesiod’s Pandora story, hope remains inside the container after the evils escape.
The detail appears near the end of the account in Works and Days. Pandora closes the vessel before hope can leave, although the exact interpretation of that scene has been debated since antiquity and by modern scholars. The text does not provide a simple explanation accepted by everyone.
Some readers understand hope as a comfort preserved for humans, while others note that it is still enclosed and therefore interpret the ending more darkly. The Greek term elpis can refer to expectation or anticipation, not only optimistic hope in the modern sense.
Modern retellings commonly say that Pandora released all the world’s evils but left hope behind. That concise summary is faithful to the central image, though it can hide the ambiguity of Hesiod’s wording and the larger moral questions raised by the poem.