In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the vessel often mistranslated as Pandora’s “box” is a pithos. A pithos was a large Greek storage jar, commonly used for goods such as grain, wine, or oil. The Greek word is πίθος, transliterated as pithos.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” became standard through a translation history. The sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus translated the Greek container using the Latin word pyxis, meaning a small box or casket. Later European retellings popularized the box image, even though the earliest surviving literary version specifies a jar.
This distinction matters because the container is part of the myth’s imagery. Pandora does not necessarily open a small hinged box in Hesiod’s account; she opens or uncovers a large storage vessel, releasing evils into the world. “Pandora’s jar” is therefore closer to the ancient text.