Pithos is the Greek word commonly identified as the container in the Pandora story, rather than a small box.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world for commodities such as grain, wine, or oil. Hesiod’s Works and Days describes Pandora closing this kind of container after its contents escaped.
The “box” version became standard through later translation and retelling. Renaissance scholar Erasmus helped popularize the phrase through the Latin expression pyxis Pandorae, which means “Pandora’s box,” even though the earlier Greek story used a jar.
This distinction explains why ancient vase paintings and modern illustrations can look so different. The container’s form changed in cultural memory, but the central narrative remained the same: its opening released troubles, while one thing stayed within.