Erasmus translated Pandora’s Greek jar as a box in the Latin tradition, helping create the familiar phrase “Pandora’s box.”
The earliest Greek accounts use pithos, a large jar or storage vessel. When the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the story into Latin, he used pyxis, a word meaning a box or small container. That choice spread through later retellings and transformed the object in popular imagination.
The change is a translation history rather than a different ancient Greek event. Classical artists and modern illustrations often show a chest or lidded box because the later phrase became more familiar than the original description.
Erasmus lived from 1466 to 1536 and was one of the most influential scholars of the Northern Renaissance. His editions and translations helped circulate classical stories widely among European readers.