Who is credited with popularizing the phrase “Pandora's box” through a Latin translation?

Desiderius Erasmus is credited with popularizing the phrase “Pandora's box” through a Latin translation.

Hesiod's early Greek account describes a pithos, a large jar or storage vessel, rather than a small box. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Erasmus rendered the vessel as pyxis in a Latin version of the story. Pyxis can refer to a box or casket, and that choice helped establish the wording now familiar in many languages.

The change was influential because Latin remained a major language of European scholarship and education. Later writers and artists repeated the box image, gradually making it more recognizable than the original jar.

This is why “Pandora's box” is not simply a literal quotation from Hesiod. The phrase reflects a long transmission history involving translation, printing, classical education, and popular retelling.