In Hesiod’s original account, a jar held the world’s evils before Pandora opened it. The Greek word pithos refers to a large storage jar, not specifically to a small wooden box.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” became standard through later translation and retelling. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam helped popularize the Latin expression “pyxis,” meaning box, when he translated the story. That wording shaped the expression used in many modern languages.
Hesiod’s Works and Days says that Pandora opened the container and released diseases, toil, and other troubles that had previously been unknown among humans. Hope remained inside, although ancient and modern readers have debated what its position means.
The jar-versus-box distinction is one of the most frequently discussed details in the myth. Calling it a box is culturally familiar and not usually treated as an error in everyday speech, but “jar” is the more accurate description of Hesiod’s original object.