Erasmus helped popularize the phrase “Pandora’s box” in a 1508 Latin work.
The ancient Greek story originally described Pandora’s container as a pithos, a large storage jar, rather than a box. The box wording became influential through later retellings and translations. In his collection of proverbs, Adagia, the Dutch Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus used the Latin expression “pyxis Pandorae,” meaning Pandora’s box, helping establish the familiar form in European literary culture.
The expression later became an idiom for an action or discovery that produces many unforeseen and damaging consequences. The modern phrase therefore reflects both the Greek myth and a long history of translation. It is also why references to Pandora often involve a box, even though Hesiod’s original Greek account used the word pithos for the vessel.