In Hesiod’s story of Pandora, Pandora opened a jar to release troubles into the world.
The earliest surviving literary account appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece. Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos, which means a large storage jar, rather than a small box. The vessel contained harmful forces or evils that had previously been kept away from human life.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” developed later. In the sixteenth century, the humanist Erasmus translated or interpreted the Greek vessel as a box, helping establish the wording that became standard in European languages. The phrase now means an action that creates many unforeseen problems.
The jar detail is an important source of common mix-ups. Ancient Greek storage jars could be very large, and Pandora’s vessel was not necessarily a portable container like the decorative boxes shown in modern illustrations. The myth’s central point is the sudden arrival of suffering among humans.