In Hesiod’s myth, Pandora opened a pithos, a large Greek storage jar later mistranslated as a box.
The word pithos refers to a substantial ceramic container used in the ancient Greek world for storing goods such as grain, wine, and oil. Hesiod uses the Greek term pithos in his account of Pandora in Works and Days. The vessel is therefore more accurately imagined as a jar or storage container than as a small modern box.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed through a translation history. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus rendered the Greek vessel with the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or casket, in a 1508 edition of Hesiod. That choice shaped the expression now used in English and many other languages.
The jar-versus-box distinction does not change the central mythic episode: Pandora opens a sealed container, and troubles escape into the human world. The original wording is important because it reflects everyday Greek material culture rather than a later decorative box.