In Hesiod’s account of Pandora, the opened vessel was a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world, commonly for goods such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Greek wording refers to a pithos, not specifically to the small box suggested by the modern English expression “Pandora’s box.”
The “box” wording arose through later translation history. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus translated the Greek vessel term into Latin as pyxis, meaning a box or casket. That choice helped establish the familiar expression in European languages, even though the earliest surviving literary account describes a jar.
The distinction matters because the myth’s original image is a substantial storage container. Modern paintings, books, films, and logos often show a hinged box, but that visual convention reflects the later phrase rather than Hesiod’s exact vessel. “Pithos” is the precise ancient term associated with the story.