In Greek mythology, Pandora’s box was originally a jar. The earliest surviving account describes Pandora opening a large storage vessel, called a pithos in Greek, rather than a small box.
The “box” wording comes from a Renaissance translation. The humanist Erasmus translated the Greek term into Latin as pyxis, meaning box or casket, and that version became influential in European retellings. The familiar English expression therefore reflects a translation history rather than the object in Hesiod’s original story.
A pithos was a substantial clay container used in ancient Greece for storing goods such as grain, oil, or wine. This helps explain why the myth’s vessel could contain many evils. The story is preserved mainly in Hesiod’s Works and Days, written centuries before the Renaissance.