Erasmus is associated with translating Pandora’s jar as a box.
Hesiod’s Greek word was pithos, meaning a large storage jar or vessel. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus used the Latin word pyxis in a version of the story. Pyxis referred to a box or container, and this translation helped establish the expression “Pandora’s box” in later European usage.
The change is a well-known example of how a translation can influence the popular form of a myth. The ancient Greek story did not originally describe the compact box that appears in modern paintings, cartoons, books, and idioms. Those later images became so familiar that many people assume they reflect Hesiod’s exact wording.
Erasmus was a major Renaissance scholar, theologian, and classical-language editor. He did not invent Pandora, but his Latin rendering helped shape the title by which the story is now known in English and many other languages.