In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opens a jar rather than a box.
The Greek word used by Hesiod is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for grain, wine, oil, or other goods. The object became a container for destructive forces in the myth, which explains why the original Greek account differs from the familiar English expression “Pandora’s box.”
The “box” wording developed through later translation history. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated pithos into Latin as pyxis, meaning a small box or container. That choice helped establish the phrase now used in English and many other languages. The jar-versus-box distinction is therefore about the transmission of the story, not a separate myth.
Hesiod’s account appears in Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece. The story links Pandora’s arrival with Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus gave humans fire.