Which scholar’s Latin retelling helped turn Pandora’s jar into the familiar “box”?

Desiderius Erasmus’s Latin retelling helped popularize the familiar idea of Pandora’s “box.”

In Hesiod’s Greek account, Pandora receives a pithos, generally understood as a large jar or storage vessel. During the Renaissance, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated or adapted the expression into Latin using terminology associated with a box. That wording helped establish “Pandora’s box” in later European languages.

The change is a famous example of how translation can reshape a myth. A pithos could be a substantial household container, while a modern box usually suggests a smaller rigid container with a lid. The English title is therefore traditional, but it does not precisely describe the vessel in Hesiod’s original story.

Erasmus was a major Renaissance scholar whose works circulated widely in Latin. His influence helped make the box version more familiar to later readers, even though ancient Greek sources describe a jar-like vessel.