In Hesiod’s Pandora myth, the troubles were kept in a pithos, a large Greek storage jar.
The ancient Greek word pithos referred to a substantial ceramic container used for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Works and Days describes a container, but it does not call it a small box. The “box” interpretation developed through later translation and retelling.
The Latin writer Erasmus helped popularize the phrase “Pandora’s box,” and that wording strongly shaped modern culture. As a result, paintings, books, films, and everyday speech usually depict a hinged box rather than a storage jar. The jar is important because it matches ordinary Greek material culture more closely than the modern image does.
Some translations use “jar” instead of the transliterated term pithos. Both refer to the same general object in this context, while “box” is the later conventional expression.