In Greek mythology, the storage jar that later became Pandora’s “box” was called a pithos.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes a large earthenware storage jar, known in Greek as a pithos. Such jars were used in the ancient Greek world for storing commodities including grain, oil or wine. The object in the myth was therefore a practical vessel, not necessarily a small wooden container.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through translation and artistic tradition. Erasmus’s Latin rendering is commonly associated with the shift from jar to box, after which the box became the standard image in European languages.
The correction does not change the myth’s central event: Pandora opens the container and troubles escape into the world. Hope remains inside in Hesiod’s account, a detail that has generated centuries of debate over whether hope was meant as a comfort or another ambiguity.