In Hesiod’s version of Pandora’s story, evils escaped after the container was opened.
Hesiod’s Works and Days says that Pandora lifted the lid of a storage vessel, allowing countless troubles to escape and spread among humanity. These troubles represent the pains and hardships that had previously been kept away from human life. The poem does not present the scene exactly like many modern retellings of a hinged box.
The myth forms part of a wider explanation for why human existence includes disease, labor, suffering, and other difficulties. In Hesiod’s account, the vessel is associated with Zeus’s plan to punish humanity after Prometheus’s theft of fire.
Modern readers often assume that the original Greek story specifically used a box. That detail comes from a later translation tradition: the Greek word pithos means a large storage jar or container. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” became standard in later European culture.