Elpis

Elpis is the Greek word for hope, and in Hesiod’s Works and Days Hope is the one thing that stays inside the jar when the woman Pandora lifts its lid and scatters evils over mankind. Greek authors do not agree on whether hope is a blessing or a delusion. In Hesiod’s story Hope is treated almost as a living being, and the Romans worshipped Hope as a goddess, Spes, with temples in Rome.

Elpis in Hesiod

In Works and Days Hesiod tells how Zeus punished mankind for Prometheus’s theft of fire by giving them a woman made by Hephaestus. Hermes called her Pandora, “because all who have their homes on Olympus gave her as a gift”, a bane to grain-eating men (Hesiod, Works and Days 80–82). Epimetheus, ignoring Prometheus’s warning not to accept any gift from Zeus, took her in (Works and Days 83–89).

Before this, Hesiod says, the tribes of men lived on earth without evils, hard work, or the diseases that bring the Keres. Then the woman took the great lid off a jar (pithos) and scattered its contents, and sorrows were set loose among men. “Only Hope (Elpis) remained there in an unbreakable home within the jar, under its lip, and did not fly out of the door; for the lid of the jar closed first, by the will of Zeus.” The other countless evils wander among men, since earth and sea are full of them, and diseases come by day and night, bringing evils in silence, because Zeus took away their voice (Works and Days 90–105).

The jar is often called Pandora’s box, but Hesiod uses the word pithos, a large storage jar. He does not say whether Hope staying in the jar is good or bad for mankind, nor does he explain what it is doing there.

Hope in Other Greek Authors

Other early writers speak of hope in both a good and a bad light. In Aeschylus, Prometheus says that he stopped mortals from foreseeing their death, and that the cure he found for this was to settle “blind hopes” in them (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 248–252). Sophocles has the chorus say that wandering hope is a comfort to many men but also deceives the unwary with light desires (Sophocles, Antigone 615–617). Hesiod himself warns the idle man who sits waiting on empty hope without enough to live on that hope is no good companion for a man in need (Works and Days 498–501).

Family

Hesiod gives Elpis no mother or father. His Theogony lists the children of Night (Theogony 211–225), and Hope is not among them. Rumour (Pheme), whom Hesiod calls a goddess, is given no parents either (Works and Days 760–764).

Spes in Rome

The Romans honoured Hope as Spes. Livy mentions a temple of Spes near which the Romans fought the Etruscans in the early Republic (Livy 2.51.2), the temple of Hope in the vegetable market that was struck by lightning during the war with Hannibal (Livy 21.62.4), and the rebuilding of the temple of Spes outside the Porta Carmentalis after a fire (Livy 25.7.6).

Elpis Sources

Hesiod, Works and Days 80–105, 498–501, 760–764; Hesiod, Theogony 211–225; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 248–252; Sophocles, Antigone 615–617; Livy 2.51.2, 21.62.4, 25.7.6.

See Also: Pandora, Pheme, Nyx, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Zeus, Hermes