In Hesiod’s version of the Pandora myth, Pandora released evils into the human world.
The container held destructive conditions that had previously been kept away from humanity. Once Pandora opened it, these evils escaped and spread among people. Hesiod’s story uses the event to explain why human life contains suffering, disease, labor, and other hardships.
The myth is part of a wider Greek tradition about the difficult relationship between gods and humans. Zeus’s punishment follows Prometheus’s theft of fire, so Pandora’s story is not an isolated tale about curiosity. It is also a divine response to a challenge to Zeus’s authority.
Modern retellings often describe the contents as “all the evils of the world.” That wording captures the general idea, although translations differ in how they render the Greek terms. The concise canonical answer is “evils,” rather than a single named disease or disaster.