Erasmus popularized the expression “Pandora’s box” after translating the Greek container as a box. Hesiod’s original account describes a pithos, a large storage jar or container, not the small box familiar in modern English.
The wording became influential through Renaissance Latin scholarship. Erasmus used the phrase pyxis Pandorae, meaning “Pandora’s box,” in his Adagia, a major collection of proverbs first published in 1500. The translation helped establish the form that later European languages and popular culture adopted.
The common phrase therefore reflects a translation history rather than the exact vessel in Hesiod. “Pandora’s box” now means a source of unforeseen troubles released by an action, and it is often used outside mythology. The Greek jar remains important for understanding the ancient text, while Erasmus’s wording explains why the modern expression uses “box.”