In Greek mythology, Pandora’s container originally contained evils that spread through the human world when it was opened.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes the release of harmful forces from a sealed storage jar. These forces represent troubles that affect human life, including disease, exhausting labor, and other forms of suffering. The story presents them as previously confined rather than as ordinary objects that could be physically counted.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” comes from a later translation tradition. Hesiod used the Greek word pithos, meaning a large jar or storage vessel. The Latin humanist Erasmus translated the term as pyxis, a small box, in the sixteenth century, helping establish the modern wording.
The myth is often simplified into a story about curiosity alone, but Hesiod’s version also connects it to Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire. Pandora’s opening of the vessel becomes the event that makes previously contained evils part of human existence.