The original Greek vessel in the Pandora story was a pithos, a large storage jar. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” arose later from a translation shift rather than from Hesiod’s original wording.
In Works and Days, Hesiod uses the Greek word pithos for the container Pandora opens. A pithos was a substantial ceramic vessel used in the ancient Mediterranean for storing commodities such as grain, oil, or wine. It was generally much larger and more practical than the small box shown in many modern illustrations.
The “box” tradition is often connected with a sixteenth-century Latin translation by Erasmus, who rendered the Greek vessel as a box or container. Modern retellings then made “Pandora’s box” the standard expression. The distinction matters because the original myth concerns a storage jar, not a hinged rectangular box.