In Hesiod’s Pandora myth, the escaped troubles came from a jar.
The Greek word used in the oldest surviving literary account is pithos, a large storage jar or container. Hesiod’s Works and Days does not call it a box. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed much later through translation history and artistic tradition, especially after the Latin word pyxis was associated with a smaller box.
The jar was given to Pandora, or was already part of the divine arrangement surrounding her, depending on how the passage is interpreted. When it was opened, destructive forces escaped into the human world. Hope remained inside in the traditional reading, although scholars debate the precise meaning and role of hope in the passage.
This object is one of the myth’s most important translation issues. Saying “jar” is more historically accurate for Hesiod’s Greek text, while “Pandora’s box” is the established expression in English. The two phrases refer to the same famous mythic container.