The original Greek word for the container in Hesiod’s Pandora story is pithos.
A pithos was a large storage jar used in ancient Greece and the wider Aegean world. Such jars could hold grain, oil, wine, or other goods, and they were often much larger and more practical than the small decorative boxes imagined by modern readers. Hesiod’s term is therefore important for understanding the physical object in the earliest account.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later through translation and retelling. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus translated the Greek container as a Latin pyxis, meaning a box or small container, helping establish the wording that became standard in European languages.
A pithos is not the same as an amphora, which typically has two handles and a narrower shape, or a krater, which was used for mixing wine and water. The translation history explains why the modern title differs from Hesiod’s wording.