In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opens a jar and releases evils into the world.
The Greek poet Hesiod describes Pandora as the first woman, created by the gods as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire. The container is called a pithos, a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world. Hesiod does not call it a box in the surviving Greek text.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later because translators and retellings replaced the jar with a smaller container. The change became especially influential after the Renaissance, when the Greek word pithos was associated with the Latin term pyxis, meaning a box or casket.
The story also says that hope remained inside after the other evils escaped. This detail has prompted centuries of debate, because the Greek word elpis can mean expectation or hope, and Hesiod does not explain why it stayed behind.