In Hesiod’s account of Pandora’s box, the container was originally called a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in ancient Greece, commonly for grain, wine, or oil. Hesiod’s Greek wording describes Pandora receiving a pithos, not a small hinged box. The familiar “Pandora’s box” wording developed later through translation and cultural retelling.
The distinction matters because the vessel in the earliest surviving literary account was a substantial earthenware container. Erasmus’s Latin rendering helped popularize the word pyxis, meaning a box, which influenced the modern name.
Pandora’s story appears most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece. Modern illustrations often show a decorated chest, but that image reflects later tradition rather than Hesiod’s original terminology.