No myth is more familiar than that of Pandora, none perhaps has been so completely misunderstood. Pandora is the first woman, the beautiful mischief: she opens the forbidden box, out comes every evil that flesh is heir to; hope only remains. The box of Pandora is proverbial, and that is the more remarkable as she never had a box at all.The myth of the making of Pandora we may reserve for the present and focus our attention on the famous ‘box.’ ‘Jupiter gave her a beautiful box,’ says Lemprière (p. 543). ‘In the house of Epimetheus was a closed jar;’ says the last edition of Smith's Classical Dictionary, but a little further down we read: ‘later writers relate that the box contained all the blessings of the gods.’ The reference given for this statement is Hyginus, Fab. cxlii., in which there is no mention whatever of any jar, casket or box, only an account of the creation and descendants of Pandora.