Pithos is the ancient Greek term for the large storage jar in Hesiod’s Pandora story.
A pithos was a large ceramic vessel used in ancient Greece and the wider Aegean world. Such jars could store agricultural products, including grain, wine, and oil. The term is more precise than the everyday English word “jar,” and it identifies the original object described in Hesiod’s account.
The famous “box” is the result of a later translation tradition. In the sixteenth century, the Greek vessel was rendered into Latin as pyxis, a word associated with a box or container. European retellings then popularized Pandora’s box, making that phrase more familiar than Pandora’s jar.
Other Greek vessels have distinct forms and uses. An amphora normally has two handles and a narrower neck, a krater is used for mixing wine and water, and a lekythos is a smaller oil container. None is the specific vessel named in Hesiod’s story.