In Hesiod’s version of the Pandora myth, evils escaped when Pandora opened the container.
Hesiod describes the container as holding a collection of troubles that had previously been kept away from human life. When Pandora opened it, these evils flew out and spread among humanity. The story gives a mythic explanation for why suffering, disease, toil, and other hardships exist in the world.
The container is often called Pandora’s box in modern English, but Hesiod’s Greek text uses the word pithos, meaning a large storage jar. Renaissance humanist Erasmus helped popularize the “box” version through a Latin translation, and that wording became dominant in later European culture.
The myth does not present Pandora as simply a villain. She is created and sent as part of Zeus’s response to Prometheus’s theft of fire. The story is therefore also about conflict between Zeus and humanity, the limits of human foresight, and the arrival of conditions that shape mortal life.