Note 168 — Chapter III · LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS.

Opp. Di. 93. Pandôra does not bring with her the cask, as the common version of this story would have us suppose: the cask exists fast closed in the custody of Epimêtheus, or of man himself, and Pandôra commits the fatal treachery of removing the lid. The case is analogous to that of the closed bag of unfavorable winds which Æolus gives into the hands of Odysseus, and which the guilty companions of the latter force open, to the entire ruin of his hopes (Odyss. x. 19-50). The idea of the two casks on the threshold of Zeus, lying ready for dispensation—one full of evils the other of benefits—is Homeric (Iliad, xxiv. 527):—

Plutarch assimilates to this the πίθος opened by Pandôra, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 7. p. 105. The explanation here given of the Hesiodic passage relating to Hope, is drawn from an able article in the Wiener Jahrbücher, vol. 109 (1845), p. 220, Ritter; a review of Schömmann’s translation of the Promêtheus of Æschylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they remain shut up in the cask: the same mischief-making influence which lets them out to their calamitous work, takes care that Hope shall still continue a powerless prisoner in the inside.