Hesiod is the bringer of food to the house. By contrast, his brother, Perses is the excessive spender, the over-buyer. The characters represent opposite life-styles. Neither of them is a physical person.
The Greek word kalon (good) is what we receive. The
Greek word kakon (bad, evil) is what
we give. For the seller, kakon is
what he sells out. The mytheme ‘all evils flew out of the pithos’ means that
the pithos contents were sold out. Pithos is a big commercial or
manufacturing container. For the buyer, kalon
is what one buys; kakon is the price
one has to pay for the goods one receives; i.e. not only the cost in money but
also whatever one needs to suffer at work in order to be able to buy, or else,
whatever one has to suffer in order to pay back a consumer loan (gift).
Pandora is the
shop, the shop window and/or the mannequin (clay statue) displayed for
commercial attraction purposes. Perhaps, sculpture developed in Greece
primarily for commercial purposes. Prometheus is the provider, the donor, the
server, the supplier, the producer, the wholesaler. Epimetheus, Pandora’s
husband, is the receiver, the customer, the client, the retailer, the
shopkeeper, the grocer.
The Greek elpis, now meaning hope, is one of the
separated liquid/solid phases (sediment, aqueous phase, fat, etc.), the useless
one, which remains in the container after separation and dispensation. A more
likely English cognate of elpis is help, rather than hope.