In Greek mythology, the vessel later popularly called Pandora’s box was originally called a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world, commonly for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s early accounts of Pandora describe her receiving a vessel, but do not call it a box in the modern sense.
The “box” wording developed through a famous translation history. In the sixteenth century, Erasmus translated the Greek term into Latin as pyxis, meaning a small box or container. Later European retellings spread the familiar expression “Pandora’s box.”
The change is a common source of confusion: the oldest Greek version describes a storage jar, not a hinged wooden box. The jar’s contents also vary in later artistic and literary treatments, although the standard myth says that harmful forces escaped when Pandora opened it.