In Hesiod’s earliest surviving account, Pandora opened a large storage jar.
The Greek term is pithos, a substantial vessel used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing goods such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod does not call it a box. The phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through a translation tradition and became fixed in European languages.
The change from jar to box is commonly linked to Renaissance scholarship. The humanist Erasmus translated the vessel into Latin as pyxis, a word that can mean a box or casket, rather than preserving the Greek pithos. Later retellings popularized the altered image.
This distinction matters because the original vessel was large enough to function as household storage, while a small box creates a different visual impression. Both “Pandora’s jar” and “Pandora’s box” now refer to the same myth, but the jar is the form in Hesiod’s text.