Pandora's Jar
The great jar or pithos that Pandora opened, releasing sorrows and evils upon humankind and keeping hope alone trapped inside, in Hesiod's Works and Days; the familiar 'box' is a later Latin mistranslation of pithos. Given to Epimetheus as Zeus' gift, together with Pandora herself, the jar explains the origin of toil, sickness, and death in Greek myth. Whether hope remaining in the jar is a comfort or another evil has been argued over for two and a half thousand years. The jar is thus a founding image of the human condition in Greek thought.