In the Greek myth of Pandora, the original Greek container was called a pithos before later translations made it a box.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in the ancient Greek world, especially for commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Greek text uses the word pithos in the Pandora story. The vessel was therefore much closer to a large earthenware storage jar than to a small wooden box.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” became standard after a translation tradition associated with the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or small container. Erasmus used that term in a sixteenth-century Latin rendering, helping establish the expression that became common in European languages. This creates a frequent mix-up: the ancient Greek source describes a jar, while the popular English idiom says box. Both refer to the same mythic container, but “pithos” is the more precise term for Hesiod’s original version.