In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Greek word for Pandora’s container is pithos. A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world for products such as grain, oil, or wine.
The vessel’s size matters because it was not necessarily a small personal object. Pithoi could be very large and were often kept in storerooms or partly buried for stability and cool storage. Hesiod uses this type of container in the story of Pandora.
The English expression “Pandora’s box” arose through later translation history. Renaissance scholars associated the Greek container with the Latin word pyxis, which means a box or small container. That change helped establish the wording familiar today, even though pithos is the term found in the Greek text.
Pithos is sometimes confused with amphora, another well-known Greek vessel. An amphora generally has two handles and a narrower shape, while a pithos is a large storage jar. The distinction explains why archaeological and classical references call Pandora’s container a jar.