Erasmus coined the modern phrase “Pandora’s box” after translating Hesiod’s jar as a box.
The ancient Greek story refers to a pithos, a large storage jar. During the Renaissance, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus used the Latin expression pyxis, meaning box, in his treatment of the myth. That translation helped establish the wording that became familiar in European languages, even though it does not match the vessel in Hesiod’s Greek text.
The phrase later developed into an idiom for an action or discovery that creates many unforeseen problems. Its modern meaning is broader than the ancient narrative, but it preserves the basic image of troubles being released from a sealed container.
Erasmus was a sixteenth-century scholar and priest best known for his humanist writings and editions of classical and Christian texts. Homer, Virgil, and Ovid also shaped classical literary culture, but they did not coin this modern expression. The key change came through Renaissance translation rather than through a new ancient version of the myth.