Erasmus popularized the phrase “Pandora’s box” through a sixteenth-century translation.
The earliest Greek version describes a pithos, a large storage jar. In 1508, the Dutch humanist Erasmus translated the story into Latin and used pyxis, a word meaning box or small container. That choice helped establish the “box” image in European literary culture, even though it does not reproduce Hesiod’s original vessel precisely.
Erasmus was a major Renaissance scholar whose editions and translations circulated widely among educated European readers. His rendering influenced later retellings, and the box became more familiar than the jar in English and many other languages.
The change is often described as a mistranslation, although translation choices can also reflect attempts to make an unfamiliar object understandable to a new audience. The modern idiom now means an action or situation that creates many unforeseen problems. Its meaning comes from the myth, while its most famous physical detail comes from a later Latin wording.