The original Greek name of Pandora’s container was pithos. A pithos was a large storage jar, usually made of clay, used in the ancient Greek world for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” comes from a translation tradition rather than from the earliest surviving Greek wording. Hesiod’s Works and Days describes a pithos, not a small hinged box. The Latin scholar Erasmus helped popularize the “box” version when he rendered the Greek term as pyxis, a word associated with a box or container.
This distinction matters because the familiar image of Pandora opening a little box is later cultural shorthand. Ancient Greek storage jars could be much larger and were practical household or agricultural vessels. The story’s central idea remains the release of evils into the human world, followed by the retention of Hope.
“Pithos” is therefore the precise answer when the question concerns the container in Hesiod’s account, while “Pandora’s box” is the established modern expression.