Works And Days By Hesiod: An Analysis

In Works and Days, Hesiod depicts a mystical story of punishment when Zeus decides to create a beautiful woman named Pandora to punish Prometheus for stealing fire. He then gave Pandora a jar containing misery and turmoil and sends her to Epimetheus who is Prometheus’s cousin where he accepts her and she swiftly releases evil upon man. Yet Elpis the spirit of hope stays in the jar. Elpis was in the jar of turmoil which leads the audience to the suggestion that Elpis is also an evil “for earth is full of evils” (Hesiod, Works and Days, 101). Elpis is kept away from man because the jar acts as a prison, where man cannot access idle hope. Zeus may not have released Elpis because “the idle man who waits on empty hope, lacking a livelihood, lays