In Hesiod’s version of Pandora’s story, Pandora opened a jar.
The Greek word in the ancient account is pithos, a large storage jar used for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Works and Days does not describe a small hinged box of the kind commonly shown in modern illustrations. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through translation and retelling.
The jar held evils or troubles that escaped into the world when Pandora opened it. The image became a powerful explanation for why suffering exists in human life, while also providing a memorable warning about consequences that cannot easily be reversed.
The word “box” became standard in many languages because of a sixteenth-century Latin translation associated with Erasmus, who rendered the Greek container as pyxis, meaning a box. Ancient Greek readers, however, would have encountered a jar rather than the compact container of popular culture.