The vessel later popularized as Pandora’s “box” was a jar.
Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos in Works and Days. A pithos was a large earthenware storage jar used for goods such as grain, oil, or wine. It was not the small wooden or metal box suggested by the English expression “Pandora’s box.”
The wording changed through later translation and artistic tradition. The influential sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus translated the Greek term into Latin as pyxis, meaning a box or small container. That choice helped establish the phrase that became standard in European languages.
The difference is more than a vocabulary footnote. A pithos was a familiar practical object in ancient Greek life, while later paintings, books, and popular culture reshaped it into a compact box. Both versions refer to the same myth, but the jar is closer to Hesiod’s original account.