In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the storage vessel Pandora opens is called a pithos. A pithos was a large ancient Greek storage jar, generally used for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s original account does not describe a small box in the modern sense.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed through later interpretation and translation. The Latin writer Erasmus used the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or container, when discussing the story. That wording helped shift the image from a large jar to the compact box known in modern English.
This change is one of the most important differences between the ancient text and popular retellings. The pithos belongs to the agricultural and household world of archaic Greece, while a box creates a more portable and visually simple object for later art, literature, and education.
The vessel’s exact contents also vary in presentation. Hesiod describes destructive troubles leaving the container, with Hope remaining inside. Later versions often call everything inside “evils” and place greater emphasis on Pandora’s curiosity, even though Hesiod’s poem does not use that modern psychological framing in the same way.