In Hesiod’s account of Pandora, the original container was a pithos, not a box.
A pithos was a large ancient Greek storage jar, commonly used for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. In Works and Days, Hesiod says Pandora lifted the lid of a container and released troubles into the human world. The Greek word used is pithos, a term for a substantial jar rather than a small chest.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” arose much later through translation and artistic tradition. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated or popularized the Latin form pyxis, which means box, and that wording helped establish the expression used in many modern languages. The change became so influential that “Pandora’s box” is now the standard phrase even though it does not reproduce Hesiod’s original object.
This distinction matters because the jar emphasizes storage and containment, while a box suggests a different household object. Both the ancient jar and the modern phrase refer to the same mythic release of evils.