174 Chapter 8
A bearded Zeus contemplates a large pithos with a small girl peeping
out of the jar. She is Elpis/Hope, confined in the pithos by Zeus’s order.
This intriguing vase surely copied a more sophisticated Attic vase now
lost, notes Neils. The Etruscan artist “juxtaposes two analogous scenes.”
In each vignette, a male divinity “contemplates female evil.”35
The second artifact is a small terra- cotta aryballos (perfume flask)
from Boeotia, a region north of Athens, made in about 625– 600 BC. It
is shaped like a pithos with the sculpted head of a young woman at the
top as though popping up out of the jar (fig. 8.12). The opening of the
flask is made to look like the lid of the jar. We can assume, with Neils,
Fig. 8.12. Grinning Hope/Elpis peeking out of Pandora’s jar. Aryballos (perfume flask), ceramic,
sixth century BC, Thebes, Boeotia, Greece. Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 01.8056. Photograph © 2018
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.