In Hesiod’s Greek myth, the container holding the world’s evils was called a pithos.
A pithos was a large ancient Greek storage jar, generally made from pottery and used for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod uses this kind of container in Works and Days when describing Pandora’s destructive curiosity. The jar is not the small hinged box familiar from modern retellings.
The expression “Pandora’s box” became established through later translation and adaptation. Erasmus of Rotterdam used the Latin term pyxis, meaning a box or casket, in a sixteenth-century retelling. That wording helped shape the phrase used in English and many other languages.
The distinction matters because the original Greek object reflects ordinary storage technology rather than a specially magical box. Some translations still render the object as a jar, vessel, or storage jar, but pithos is the specific ancient Greek term most associated with Hesiod’s account.