In Hesiod’s Greek myth, Pandora opened a jar that released humanity’s troubles.
The earliest surviving literary versions do not describe a box in the modern sense. Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in ancient Greece, refers to a large storage jar, commonly identified with the Greek word pithos. Later translations and retellings helped turn that jar into the familiar “box” of popular culture.
The container held evils or hardships that spread through the human world when Pandora opened it. Hope remained inside, depending on how the Greek passage is interpreted and translated. Some readings say hope stayed behind the lid; others debate whether it was deliberately withheld or simply retained.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” is therefore a famous example of a myth changing through translation. The story’s oldest form features a jar, while the English idiom uses “box” to mean a source of unexpected trouble.