In Hesiod’s Works and Days, evils escaped after Pandora opened the gods’ container.
Hesiod describes Pandora lifting the lid of a large storage vessel, allowing destructive conditions to spread among humans. The poem refers to diseases and other forms of suffering that had previously been kept away from people. This episode explains, within the myth, why human life contains illness, toil, and hardship.
The popular expression “Pandora’s box” is based on a translation tradition, but Hesiod’s Greek text describes a pithos, or large jar, rather than a small box. The container’s shape and material therefore differ from the image used in many modern illustrations. The story also does not present the evils as individual named monsters.
Readers sometimes say that Pandora deliberately released evil. Hesiod’s narrative instead presents her opening the vessel as part of the divine plan and as an act with catastrophic consequences. The myth is a traditional explanation of human suffering, not a historical account.