Pandora was the "pagan Eve," and she is one of the rare mythological figures to have retained vitality up to our day. Glorified by Calderón, Voltaire, and Goethe, she is familiar to all of us, and "Pandora's box" is a household word. In this classic study Dora and Erwin Panofsky trace the history of Pandora and of Pandora's box in European literature and art from Roman times to the present.

"On one level this is a superior anthology of Pandoras both literary and visual, but on another it is a genuine history, at least as much a work of iconology as of iconography."