In Hesiod’s Greek myth, Pandora’s container was originally called a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in ancient Greece, commonly for grain, wine, or oil. Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos in his poem Works and Days, rather than describing a small wooden box. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed much later.
The box wording is usually associated with the Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. When Erasmus translated the Greek story into Latin, he used the word pyxis, meaning box or small container, instead of pithos. That translation helped establish the expression used in English and many other languages.
The original jar matters because it shows how a translation changed the image of the myth. The story’s central event remains the release of troubles into the world, while the container’s shape reflects later literary tradition rather than Hesiod’s wording.