In Hesiod’s Works and Days, evils escaped when Pandora opened her jar.
Hesiod describes the jar as containing numerous troubles that had previously been absent from human life. Once Pandora opened it, these evils flew out and spread among people. The story explains mythically why humans experience disease, toil, suffering, and other hardships. Pandora then closed the vessel before everything inside had escaped.
The surviving text does not give a modern inventory listing every evil in the jar. Later retellings often expand the contents into a long catalogue of human miseries, but those details should not be mistaken for a complete list from Hesiod. The familiar English phrase “Pandora’s box” also differs from the ancient text, because the Greek word means a large storage jar or pithos.
The episode is part of a wider explanation of the human condition in Hesiod’s poem. It follows the conflict involving Prometheus and Zeus and is connected to the decline of human life from an earlier, easier existence.