Letters from the Moon: coaster

"Hope was the very worst thing in Pandora's box. Hope is the root of all the other ills in there. Hope causes men and women to try when trying is in vain, hope is the source of the tyrant's power, the reason the criminal takes what isn't his, hope is the magnifier of sorrow, the sustainer of the tortured, the thing that imprisons the terminally ill in their suffering. Hope masquerades as goodness, but it is unforgiving and irresistible and utterly without scruple or principle. Hope, Mr. Dietz, it's with each of us all the time -- from the moment of our birth until the moment of our death -- and we are it's slaves, forever in bondage to the remorseless grip of Hope."


Interestingly, it turns out "Hope" may be a mistranslation:

"C.H. Moore, p.37: the word for "hope" in Greek, Ελπις, "elpis", and its context in Hesiod's Works and Days, line 96, Moore claims is better translated as "anticipation of misfortune" rather than simply "hope". It is presumed that Moore is saying that mankind could avert some misfortunes by anticipating them with what was left on the rim of Pandora's jar. Some Greek lexicons yield some support to Moore's observation. Moore's exact words on the subject, on page 37, are: "She [Pandora] opened a jar containing every kind of evil, which straightaway flew out among mankind. Only Ελπις [elpis] remained therein --- a word hardly equivalent to our Hope, but rather meaning 'anticipation of misfortune'. It is then the only plague to which man is not subjected. He is obliged to suffer, having been involved in the original sin of Prometheus, who wished to cheat Zeus of the sacrifice due him. Such is the sacred tale offered as an explanation of the presence of evils on earth". M.L. West also has an exposition and commentary on the word used, on p.169 of his Works & Days / Hesiod, edited with prolegomena and commentary. Pietro Pucci, in his Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, also addresses the full meaning of Ελπις, p.124, ff.51 and says "Ελπις properly means a larger set of expectations than our 'hope', for it implies hope, expectation, and even fear as in Homer's Iliad 13:309, 17:23, etc." Pucci goes on to write on p.104, that Hope was not always considered simply good for mankind, citing Works and Days by Hesiod, line 498 [500], "Hope [Ελπις] is a bad companion for the man in need who sits in an idle place, when he has no sufficient livelihood"."

(Aside: No doubt the Greek version of Original Sin is evidence of Hesiod or even his predecessors copying their myths from a small, insignificant Middle Eastern tribe [or even of borrowing their myths all the way from Babylon!])