In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opens a jar in the original Greek story.
The Greek word used by Hesiod is pithos, a large storage jar commonly used for agricultural goods such as grain or oil. The famous English expression “Pandora’s box” developed later, even though the earliest surviving literary account describes a jar rather than a small box.
The change is usually associated with the Renaissance scholar Erasmus, whose Latin rendering used pyxis, a word meaning box or container. That translation helped establish the form that became familiar in European languages and modern popular culture.
The vessel is sometimes called a jar of evils, but Hesiod’s text describes the troubles or destructive forces escaping after Pandora opens it. The enduring image of a compact box is therefore a translation tradition, not the literal container in the earliest Greek version.