Pandora's box Pandora herself. There is also an alternative tradition in which the divine gift of a jar was opened by a curious male. According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in his care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope, though it could also have the pessimistic meaning of "deceptive expectation". From this
Pandora humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam when he translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora into Latin. Hesiod's "pithos" refers to a large storage jar, often half-buried in the ground, used for wine, oil or grain. It can also refer to a funerary jar. Erasmus, however, translated "pithos" into the Latin word "pyxis", meaning "box". The phrase "Pandora's box" has endured ever since. Historic interpretations of the Pandora figure are rich enough to have offered Dora and Erwin Panofsky scope for monographic treatment. M. L. West writes that the story of Pandora and her jar is from a pre-Hesiodic myth, and that this explains