In the myth of Pandora, hope remained after the other evils escaped from the container. Hesiod’s Works and Days says that destructive forces spread among humanity, while Elpis, commonly translated as “Hope,” stayed inside.
The ending has generated centuries of debate. Some readers interpret hope’s remaining inside as a protection preserved for humanity; others note that the Greek text does not make its moral meaning completely straightforward. The story does not explicitly say that Pandora deliberately saved hope in the modern heroic sense.
The Greek word is Elpis, a term that can cover expectation or anticipation as well as optimistic hope. Translators therefore discuss whether the myth presents hope as a blessing, a withheld resource, or an ambiguous part of Zeus’s design.
This detail is why “hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box” became a familiar phrase. In Hesiod’s original account, the vessel is a pithos, or large jar, rather than a box.