In Hesiod’s myth of Pandora, the storage jar is called a pithos.
Hesiod’s Greek wording refers to a large earthenware storage container, not a small wooden box. A pithos was commonly used in ancient Greece for holding bulk goods such as grain, wine, or oil. Its size and practical purpose make it a fitting object for a myth involving all the troubles released into the human world.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” arose from a translation history. The Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the Greek term into Latin as pyxis, meaning a box or small container. Later European versions popularized the box image, even though Hesiod’s original object was a jar. The mistake is therefore a famous example of how translation can reshape a myth’s visual details.
Hesiod tells the story in Works and Days and also mentions Pandora in the Theogony. The jar’s exact contents vary in later retellings, while the identification of the original container as a pithos is tied to the Greek text and its ancient context.