In Hesiod’s myth of Pandora’s box, Pandora was originally given a jar, not a box. The Greek word used in the ancient story is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for grain, wine, or oil.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” arose much later through a translation tradition. The sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus translated pithos into the Latin pyxis, meaning box, helping establish the wording now common in European languages.
Hesiod’s Works and Days says that Pandora received the container from the gods and was forbidden to open it. When she did, troubles escaped into the world, while hope remained inside. Ancient readers therefore encountered a jar in the source story, even though modern retellings usually picture a small box.
This detail is one of the myth’s most famous transmission changes. The container’s shape does not alter the central story: Pandora’s curiosity releases suffering, and the surviving hope gives the myth its enduring ambiguity.