In Hesiod’s Greek myth, evils escaped from Pandora’s jar. The released contents represent the diseases, hardships, and other troubles that afflict human life.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes Pandora opening the covered vessel after it has been entrusted to her. Once opened, the contents fly out and spread among people. The story gives a mythic explanation for why suffering exists in a world that might otherwise seem more ordered.
The myth does not simply present the contents as ordinary physical objects. They function as personified or imagined forces of harm, including forms of misery that humans experience. Different translations use words such as evils, ills, or miseries.
The answer is sometimes reduced to “all the bad things,” but “evils” is the concise term used in many translations and reference works.