In Hesiod’s Pandora myth, the evils were held in a jar.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” comes from a translation tradition, not from Hesiod’s original Greek wording. In Works and Days, written in ancient Greece, the container is called a pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for grain, oil, or wine. It was not necessarily a small household box.
The word pithos was translated into Latin as pyxis, meaning a box or small container, in a later textual tradition. That change helped create the expression now used in English. The myth says Pandora opened the sealed container and released human troubles into the world, while one thing remained inside.
The container’s shape is therefore an important distinction between the ancient story and the modern idiom. “Pandora’s box” is the standard English phrase, but “Pandora’s jar” is closer to Hesiod’s text.