In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora released evils when she opened the jar. The poem describes sickness, toil, and other forms of suffering spreading among humans after the container is opened.
The ancient Greek account does not originally call the container a box. Hesiod uses the word pithos, a large storage jar. Later retellings popularized the expression “Pandora’s box,” partly because the Renaissance scholar Erasmus translated the Greek vessel as a Latin pyxis, meaning a small box or casket.
Hesiod’s story is not simply an adventure about curiosity. It is an explanation for why human life contains hardship even though the gods possess power and order. Before Pandora’s arrival, the poem presents humanity as living without the burdens that then become familiar.
The myth also says that one thing remains inside after Pandora closes the container. That element is usually translated as hope, although the precise interpretation of the Greek word elpis has been debated. The released evils and the retained hope form the story’s best-known contrast.