Pandora

Prometheus has stolen fire for humankind, and Zeus, laughing, orders a punishment disguised as a gift. In Hesiod's Works and Days, Hephaestus mixes earth with water and puts into it a human voice and strength, shaping a lovely maiden with the face of a goddess. Athena teaches her weaving, Aphrodite pours grace over her, the Graces and Persuasion hang her with gold, the Hours crown her with spring flowers, and Hermes gives her a shameless mind, a deceitful nature and the gift of speech. Because every god on Olympus gave her something, she is called Pandora, the All-Gifted. (Hesiod's other telling, in the Theogony, leaves her unnamed and has no jar.)

She is sent to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus, whose name means Afterthought. He has been warned never to accept a gift from Zeus, and accepts her anyway. Then she lifts the great lid from a storage jar and scatters what is inside: toil, sickness and countless evils that wander the earth to this day. Only Hope remains, under the rim of the jar, because the lid comes down before she can fly out.

Two things everyone remembers are not in Hesiod. He never says she was curious; he gives no motive at all. And there was no box. Hesiod's word is pithos, a storage jar big enough to climb into. The box arrived in the 16th century, when Erasmus retold the story in Latin and wrote pyxis, a small casket.