The article surveys the motivic link connecting Pirandello’s story La giara and the “Homunculus”-episode in Goethe’s Faust II. The motif of the man in an earthenware storage vessel goes back by way of Boccaccio and Apuleius to ancient Greek legends. These vessels are related, in turn, to the pithos opened by Pandora, who received the gift of mischief from Hermes. Hermes, not Pandora, is still associated with the vessel when, in Gnosticism, it becomes a container of benefits rather than ills for mankind. As Hermes Trismegistos he is then credited with the invention of alchemy, which used a vas hermeticum for the generation of homunculi. The image, popular among Romantic writers, provided Goethe’s inspiration for the scene in Faust II. In sum, the works of Pirandello and Goethe are linked by an ancient Hermetic connection.