Erasmus popularized the expression “Pandora’s box” through a Latin translation of the myth.
The earliest Greek versions of the story describe Pandora’s container as a large storage jar, called a pithos, rather than a small box. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the container into Latin as a pyxis, a word associated with a box or small container. That wording helped establish the form that became familiar in European languages.
Erasmus included the story in Adagia, his influential collection of classical proverbs and commentary. His work circulated widely among educated European readers and helped transmit ancient Greek and Roman material through Renaissance Latin scholarship. Over time, “Pandora’s box” became the standard phrase in English and several other languages.
The expression now means a seemingly simple action that unleashes many unexpected problems. The common wording is therefore a famous translation-based development, not the exact terminology of Hesiod’s original Greek account.