The Greek pottery vessel described in Hesiod’s original Pandora story is a pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in ancient Greece for commodities such as grain, wine, and olive oil. Hesiod’s Works and Days uses the Greek word pithos when describing the container Pandora opened. It was therefore a jar, not specifically a small modern box.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed through a translation history. In the sixteenth century, the humanist Erasmus translated the Greek term into Latin as pyxis, meaning a box or container. That choice helped establish the wording that became standard in European languages.
The difference matters because the original image is agricultural and domestic: a large storage vessel holding the world’s troubles. Ancient Greek pithoi could be tall, heavy, and substantial, sometimes large enough to store significant quantities of food. Modern illustrations often show a compact decorative box, but that is a later visual tradition rather than Hesiod’s exact vessel.