Pandora's box from the human race. If one takes "elpis" to mean expectant hope, then the myth's tone is pessimistic: All the evils in the world were scattered from Pandora's jar, while the one potentially mitigating force, Hope, remains locked securely inside. This interpretation raises yet another question, complicating the debate: are we to take Hope in an absolute sense, or in a narrow sense where we understand Hope to mean hope only as it pertains to the evils released from the jar? If Hope is imprisoned in the jar, does this mean that human existence is utterly hopeless? This is the
Greek mythology in western art and literature O'Neill in America, and T. S. Eliot in England, and by great novelists such as the Irish James Joyce and the French André Gide. Richard Strauss, Jacques Offenbach and many others have set Greek mythological themes to music. Greek mythology in western art and literature With the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the Renaissance, the poetry of Ovid became a major influence on the imagination of poets and artists, and remained a fundamental influence on the diffusion and perception of Greek mythology through subsequent centuries. From the early years of the Renaissance, artists portrayed subjects from Greek mythology alongside more