Erasmus helped turn Pandora’s jar into a “box” through translation.
The ancient Greek word in Hesiod’s account is pithos, meaning a large storage jar. In a Latin translation, the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus used pyxis, a term associated with a box or small container. That choice influenced later European versions of the story and helped establish the expression “Pandora’s box.”
Erasmus was a Dutch Christian humanist whose work helped revive and circulate classical Greek and Latin texts in Renaissance Europe. His translations and editions were widely read, so a lexical choice could shape how an ancient myth was imagined for centuries.
The modern box is therefore not simply an illustration of the earliest Greek text. It reflects the history of transmission from Greek to Latin and then into modern languages. The story’s title preserves that later translation rather than the original name of the vessel.