Erasmus popularized the English expression “Pandora’s box” through a Latin translation of Hesiod. The original Greek story describes a pithos, a large storage jar, rather than a box in the modern sense.
In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the relevant passage into Latin and used the word pyxis, meaning a box or small container. That wording helped establish the “box” version in European literary tradition, even though it does not match Hesiod’s original vessel.
The phrase later became an idiom for an action that creates many unforeseen problems. Ovid was a Roman poet who retold numerous Greek myths, but the translation commonly credited with changing the container into a box is associated with Erasmus.