Erasmus helped popularize the idea of “Pandora’s box” from the original Greek jar.
The Greek myth describes a pithos, a large storage vessel. In the Latin tradition, however, the container was associated with the word pyxis, which means a box. The influential humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus used the Latin phrase related to Pandora’s box in his Adagia, a collection of explanations of classical proverbs.
Erasmus published the first edition of Adagia in 1500 and expanded it repeatedly. His work circulated widely among educated European readers, helping classical stories and expressions move from Greek and Latin sources into modern European languages.
The myth itself is much older than Erasmus. Hesiod recorded its major surviving versions in eighth- or seventh-century BCE poetry. Erasmus did not invent Pandora or the opening episode; his contribution was important to the later wording and transmission that made “Pandora’s box” the standard expression in English.