Who is credited with first calling Pandora’s jar a “box” in a famous Latin translation?

Desiderius Erasmus is credited with popularizing the description of Pandora’s jar as a box in Latin translation.

Hesiod’s original Greek story used the word pithos, a large earthenware storage jar. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the relevant passage into Latin and used the word pyxis, meaning a small box or container. That choice helped establish the version now dominant in English and many other languages.

The change does not mean that Greek artists or Hesiod described a modern hinged box. It reflects the way translators sometimes selected a familiar equivalent rather than preserving a culturally specific object. Erasmus’s influential scholarship gave the altered image a wide readership.

The expression “to open Pandora’s box” now means to begin a chain of unforeseen problems. Because the phrase is so common, many readers assume the box is original to the Greek myth. The surviving ancient wording shows that this is a later translation tradition.