Erasmus helped popularize the expression “Pandora’s box” in the Renaissance.
The ancient Greek account describes Pandora opening a pithos, or large storage jar. The familiar box image is associated with later transmission of the myth, especially Latin and European retellings. The Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus included a version of the expression in his Adagia, a widely read collection of classical proverbs and explanations.
Erasmus lived from 1466 to 1536 and wrote during the Northern Renaissance. His works circulated broadly among educated European readers, helping classical references enter common literary culture. The phrase eventually became an English idiom for an action that creates many unforeseen problems.
Ovid, Cicero, and Virgil were important Roman authors, but they did not play the specific role of popularizing the Renaissance expression identified here. Ovid’s Metamorphoses also does not provide the standard Hesiodic Pandora narrative in the way many readers assume.