Evils escaped when Pandora opened the jar in the Greek myth.
In Hesiod’s account, the container held destructive forces that had previously been kept away from human life. When Pandora lifted its lid, these evils flew out and spread among people. The story explains, in mythic form, why illness, hardship, and other troubles exist in the human world.
Hesiod does not present the scene exactly like many modern retellings. He describes the contents as the countless miseries that afflict humanity, rather than giving a fixed modern inventory of named monsters or disasters. Later artists and writers expanded the image, often showing plagues, warfare, greed, and sorrow emerging from the vessel.
The myth is not a scientific account of suffering, but part of a wider Greek tradition in which divine actions explain human limitations. Pandora’s opening of the jar is also connected to the story of Prometheus, whose theft of fire had challenged Zeus’s authority.