In Hesiod’s Greek myth of Pandora, a jar released troubles into the world.
The oldest surviving literary versions of the story describe a large storage jar, called a pithos in ancient Greek. Hesiod used this object in his poems to explain why human life includes disease, labor, and other hardships. Pandora opened the jar after receiving it in the household of Epimetheus.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” arose later through a translation tradition. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated the Greek vessel using the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or small container. That wording became influential in European languages and gave the myth its standard modern name.
The jar-versus-box distinction is one of the story’s most common factual mix-ups. It does not change the plot’s central image: once the harmful contents escaped, Pandora closed the vessel, leaving Hope inside according to Hesiod’s account.