THE moment he saw her, the besotted Epimetheus at once forgot Prometheus’s warning never to accept any gift from Zeus, and welcomed Pandora, who was clutching a large wine-jar that Zeus had put into her hands, into his home with all festivity.

Once comfortably settled, Pandora decided to take a look inside her jar. She prised open the lid, and instantly there flew from it in a toxic stream the ills of which mankind as yet knew nothing, all the grief and toil and disease. She snapped the lid shut, but too late.* Everything inside had escaped, except for Hope.

Why did Zeus put kindly Hope among the ills he wished on mankind? When the lid snapped shut, did Pandora save Hope for mankind, or keep Hope from mankind? Or perhaps (for the Greek word is ambiguous) it was not Hope in there so much as anxious Foreboding, and Pandora has at least spared us that? To such questions the teasing myth gives no answer.