In Hesiod’s Works and Days, hope remained associated with Pandora’s jar after the troubles escaped. The passage has generated debate because the Greek word elpis can mean expectation or hope, and scholars disagree about whether hope is presented as a benefit, a withheld resource, or something retained for humanity.
The familiar summary says Pandora shut the container before hope could escape. That interpretation became the foundation of the modern expression that “hope remains.” However, the ancient wording and the exact position of the jar’s lid allow more than one scholarly reading.
This question differs from the often-quoted identification of the poem itself: it concerns the surviving content or association in the episode. The most common English answer remains “hope.”
The story is also distinct from later Christian interpretations. Hesiod’s poem explains the arrival of human misery within Greek mythic cosmology, not the doctrine of original sin in Genesis.