Pandora's Box

About this story

Pandora's story comes from the Greek poet Hesiod, who told it in Works and Days around 700 BC; his Theogony tells of the same first woman more briefly, without naming her. In Hesiod, Pandora opens a large clay storage jar, a pithos, not a box. The box comes from the scholar Erasmus, who in the 1500s wrote pyxis, a small box, instead, and the word stuck. This retelling keeps Hesiod's gifts of the gods, Epimetheus forgetting his brother's warning and Hope left inside the jar, and turns the troubles into small buzzing creatures rather than frightening ones. Hesiod never says why Pandora lifts the lid; like most retellings, this one makes it curiosity.

Tips for telling it

• Make the grey troubles buzz and stamp as the narrator names them, then let your child invent one more.
• Pause just before Pandora lifts the lid and ask: would you have peeked?
• Afterwards, talk about a time when hope helped your child through something hard.

Questions people ask

What is the moral of Pandora's box?

Think before you act, because some things can't be put back once they're out, and hope remains even when troubles come. Today, opening Pandora's box means starting something that causes lots of unexpected problems.

Was Pandora's box really a box?

No. In Hesiod's Greek it is a pithos, a large clay storage jar. The box comes from the Renaissance scholar Erasmus, who rendered the word as pyxis, meaning box, and later writers followed him.

What was left in Pandora's box?

Hope. In Hesiod's Works and Days, Pandora puts the lid back on by the will of Zeus, and Hope alone stays inside, under the rim of the jar. Scholars still debate whether that means hope was saved for us or kept from us.