Erasmus popularized the later “Pandora’s box” wording in Renaissance Europe.
The ancient Greek story described a pithos, or large storage jar. In the sixteenth century, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus included a Latin retelling in his Adagia, a widely read collection of proverbs and classical explanations. His version helped establish the image of a box, associated with the Latin term pyxis, in place of Hesiod’s jar.
Erasmus was not the original author of Pandora’s story. Hesiod had written the myth many centuries earlier, and ancient Greek and Roman writers had already transmitted related material. Erasmus’s importance lies in the influence of his printed Latin scholarship on later European languages and literature.
The familiar expression therefore reflects a chain of transmission: Greek myth, Latin interpretation, Renaissance printing, and modern English usage. This is why “Pandora’s box” is historically recognizable but textually different from Hesiod’s original container.