The Greek name of Pandora’s vessel in Works and Days is pithos. A pithos was a large earthenware storage container used in the ancient Mediterranean, especially for agricultural goods such as grain, oil, or wine.
The word became central to a translation history that changed the myth’s popular image. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus used the Latin term pyxis, meaning box, in a Latin rendering of the story. That choice helped produce the English expression “Pandora’s box,” even though the earliest Greek text refers to a jar.
Pyxis is therefore a related but incorrect answer to this wording: it names the later Latin-style box concept, not Hesiod’s Greek vessel. Hydria and lekythos are genuine Greek pottery terms, but they describe other vessel types. The pithos detail is a useful reminder that familiar mythological images can be shaped by translation.