In Greek mythology, Pandora opened a jar, despite the familiar English phrase “Pandora’s box.” The earliest surviving Greek accounts describe a large storage jar called a pithos, not a small box.
The story appears most famously in Hesiod’s Works and Days, written in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Zeus ordered the creation of Pandora as part of a punishment connected with Prometheus’s theft of fire. She received gifts from the gods and was given the sealed jar before arriving among humanity.
Later Latin and European retellings helped transform the jar into a box. The Latin word pyxis, meaning a small box, influenced the familiar version, and Renaissance artists and writers popularized that image. The phrase “Pandora’s box” is therefore traditional English usage, while “Pandora’s jar” is closer to Hesiod’s wording. Hope is also described as remaining inside the container after the other evils escaped.