Erasmus’s sixteenth-century Latin translation helped turn Pandora’s jar into a “box” in European usage. The Greek source calls the container a pithos, but Erasmus rendered the object with the Latin word pyxis, meaning a box or small container.
Erasmus was a Dutch Renaissance humanist whose editions and translations circulated widely among European readers. His wording influenced later retellings, illustrations, and moral discussions, gradually replacing the image of a large storage jar with a compact box.
The change is a translation history rather than an alteration in the oldest myth. Modern scholars often point out the discrepancy because it shows how classical stories evolve as they move between languages. The idiom “to open Pandora’s box” now refers to releasing a chain of unforeseen difficulties.