In Hesiod’s account, Pandora’s jar released evils into the human world.
Works and Days describes the contents as harmful conditions that had previously been kept away from human beings. When the vessel is opened, these evils spread among people, while Hope remains inside. The story became a famous mythic explanation for the existence of sickness, toil, suffering, and other troubles.
Modern retellings often say that Pandora released “all the evils of the world.” That wording is a concise summary rather than a complete quotation from the ancient poem. Hesiod’s passage uses poetic language and does not provide a modern catalog of each individual evil.
The vessel was a pithos, a large jar used for storage. The English phrase “Pandora’s box” became standard much later, so the exact object in the earliest surviving literary account is an important distinction. The myth’s central action remains the release of troubles from a sealed container.