In the ancient Greek Pandora myth, Pandora opened a pithos, a large storage jar. Hesiod’s Greek word was pithos, not “box,” making the vessel one of the myth’s most famous translation details.
A pithos was a substantial ceramic container used in ancient Greece and the wider Aegean world to store goods such as grain, oil, or wine. Its size and practical purpose differ from the small decorative box suggested by the modern phrase “Pandora’s box.”
The “box” wording became established later through Latin and European translations. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus helped popularize the expression after rendering the Greek vessel with the Latin word pyxis, meaning a small box or container. English then inherited the familiar form.
The myth appears most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days, where Pandora receives a sealed vessel and opens it despite the warning surrounding it. Modern retellings usually preserve the box image, but pithos is the historically specific answer for Hesiod’s original story.