Erasmus coined the familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” by translating the Greek vessel as a box.
In Hesiod’s original account, Pandora opens a pithos, a large storage jar or vessel. The modern expression developed after the Renaissance humanist Erasmus used the Latin phrase pyxis Pandorae, meaning “Pandora’s box,” in his Adagia.
The change from jar to box was therefore a translation and transmission development, not a detail from the earliest Greek version. The English phrase became widely established and is now used for an action that creates many unexpected problems.
Erasmus was a Dutch Renaissance scholar, priest, and writer whose collections of proverbs helped spread classical references across Europe. Because “box” is now universal in English, readers often assume it was the container named by Hesiod himself.