In Hesiod’s Greek myth, Pandora opens a pithos, a large storage jar, rather than a small box. The Greek word pithos refers to a substantial earthenware container used to store goods such as grain, oil, or wine.
The familiar “box” wording arose through a later translation tradition. In the sixteenth century, the humanist Erasmus used the Latin term pyxis, meaning a box or casket, when rendering the story. That choice strongly influenced the phrase used in many modern languages, even though Hesiod’s original image was a jar.
The distinction matters because the vessel belongs to the agricultural and household world of ancient Greece. It was not necessarily a delicate container. Modern illustrations often show Pandora lifting a lid from a small box, but the earliest literary account describes a much larger storage vessel.