Pandora Hesiod does not say why hope ("elpis") remained in the jar. and closes with the moral (105): "Thus it is not possible to escape the mind of Zeus." Hesiod also outlines how the end of man's Golden Age (an all-male society of immortals who were reverent to the gods, worked hard, and ate from abundant groves of fruit) was brought on by Prometheus. When he stole Fire from Mt. Olympus and gave it to mortal man, Zeus punished the technologically advanced society by creating woman. Thus, Pandora was created as the first woman and given the jar (mistranslated as 'box')
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