The original Greek myth places the troubles released by Pandora in a pithos, a large storage jar.
Hesiod’s Works and Days uses the Greek word pithos for the container. A pithos was a substantial vessel used in the ancient Greek world for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. It could be much larger than an everyday table jar and was often kept partly buried or supported because of its size.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” is not the wording of the earliest surviving version. The box image developed later through a translation history in which the Greek pithos was rendered using a word for a smaller container. Renaissance humanist Erasmus helped popularize the Latin expression that became the modern phrase.
This distinction matters because the vessel is part of the myth’s ancient agricultural and household setting. “Box” is now the standard idiom, but “pithos” is the more precise answer for Hesiod’s original object.