In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opens a jar, not a box.
The earliest surviving written account of Pandora’s story appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in ancient Greece. Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos, which means a large storage jar. The vessel contains the troubles that will affect humanity, and Pandora releases them when she opens it.
The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” developed much later through translation history. The Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus translated the Greek vessel as a Latin pyxis, meaning a box or small container, helping establish the form used in modern languages. The phrase is therefore traditional, but it does not precisely describe Hesiod’s original object.
Large pithoi were practical household or agricultural containers in the ancient Greek world. They could store grain, oil, or wine, making the myth’s jar a recognizable object to its original audience.