In Hesiod’s Pandora story, hope remained inside after the troubles escaped.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes Pandora opening a storage vessel that contained the evils, diseases, and hardships affecting human life. Once the contents had gone out, only Elpis remained inside. Elpis is the Greek personification or concept of hope, although the precise interpretation of its role has been debated.
The story does not clearly state whether hope remained as a blessing for humans or was kept inside as another limitation. That ambiguity has encouraged centuries of philosophical and literary discussion. Many modern retellings present hope as the comforting good that survives the release of suffering, but the ancient text is more compact and less explicit.
The expression “hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box” comes from this episode. The original Greek story concerns a pithos, or large storage jar, rather than the small box familiar in English.