In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opened a jar, not a box.
The original Greek word is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for grain, oil, or other goods. Hesiod’s account describes how the jar contained troubles that then spread among humankind. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” comes from a sixteenth-century Latin translation that rendered pithos as pyxis, meaning a small box.
The box image became standard in European retellings, paintings, books, and popular culture. This translation history explains why many modern readers know the story through a container different from the one in Hesiod’s Greek text.
The jar is also important because it connects the myth to ordinary ancient Greek storage practices rather than to a magical chest invented by the earliest source.