Hesiod’s original Pandora story uses a pithos, a large storage jar, rather than a box.
A pithos was a substantial ceramic container used in the ancient Greek world for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. Hesiod’s Works and Days describes the vessel associated with Pandora, but the Greek text does not use the modern English expression “Pandora’s box.”
The “box” wording became influential because of a Renaissance translation by the humanist Erasmus. Erasmus rendered the Greek vessel as a Latin word meaning box or container, helping establish the phrase that became standard in European languages. Later paintings, books, and films reinforced the familiar image of a small box.
The distinction matters because the vessel’s scale and function change the visual meaning of the myth. An enormous storage jar belongs naturally to an agrarian world, while a decorated box reflects later artistic convention. Both versions refer to the same mythological episode.