In Greek mythology, the original container later translated as Pandora’s “box” was a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world, commonly for commodities such as grain, wine, or oil. Hesiod’s Greek text uses the word pithos when describing the container associated with Pandora. The familiar English image of a small wooden box developed much later through translation and artistic tradition.
The change is often linked to Renaissance humanist Erasmus, whose Latin rendering used the word pyxis, meaning a box or small container. That wording helped establish the expression “Pandora’s box” in European languages, even though the earliest Greek version describes a jar.
This distinction matters because the myth’s original agricultural and household imagery is different from the modern phrase. “Pandora’s box” is now an idiom for a source of unforeseen troubles, but “Pandora’s jar” is closer to Hesiod’s wording. The story’s remaining hope is also connected with this same vessel.