Pandora's box – a blessing – doing among them? This objection leads some to render "elpis" as the expectation of evil, which would make the myth's tone somewhat optimistic: although mankind is troubled by all the evils in the world, at least we are spared the continual expectation of evil, which would make life unbearable. The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. "Elpis" takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be
Pandora to this, Pandora opened a jar ("pithos"), in modern accounts sometimes mistranslated as "Pandora's box", releasing all the evils of humanity. Hesiod's interpretation of Pandora's story, which is widely considered as misogynous, went on to influence both Jewish and Christian theology and so perpetuated her bad reputation into the Renaissance. Later poets, dramatists, painters and sculptors made her their subject and over the course of five centuries contributed new insights into her motives and significance. Hesiod, both in his "Theogony" (briefly, without naming Pandora outright, line 570) and in "Works and Days", gives the earliest version of the Pandora story.