In Greek mythology, Pandora’s jar released evils across the human world. Hesiod’s Works and Days describes previously hidden troubles escaping when Pandora opens the vessel, leaving humanity exposed to suffering and disease.
The story functions as an etiological myth: it explains why human life contains hardship. Pandora’s arrival follows Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus’s theft of fire, so the jar episode is part of a larger account of the troubled relationship between gods and humans.
The evils are sometimes summarized as “all the world’s troubles,” but the ancient account does not provide a modern catalog with a fixed number. Later writers and artists expanded the imagery, and the phrase “opening Pandora’s box” now means beginning a process that releases many unforeseen problems. The original vessel was a jar, traditionally called a pithos.