Pithos, not Pyxis: Pandora’s Box was a Jar

300 words

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We’ve all heard the expression “Pandora’s box” (or “to open a Pandora’s box”) at some time…meaning an action which will lead to unforeseen complications, problems or misfortunes down the track – analogous to the more modern saying “opening a can of worms”. It has its origin in Greek mythology, as many will know. Specifically, it relates to the myth of Pandora from Hesiod’s poem Works and Days (ca. 700BC). The only thing is that a “box” was not the type of receptacle or container the Greek myth originally alluded to. The container that Pandora received from the gods as an enigmatic gift was a jar, or more precisely a pithos🏺 (a very large Greek clay jar for storage of wine, oil, grain, even the dead). When Pandora opened the “jar” all the evils of the world escaped, but what remained within the container was “hope”, endowing the myth with a double-edge.

Pandora with a receptacle that doesn’t resemble a “box”

So how did it come to be that today everyone refers to Pandora’s box and not Pandora’s jar? Well, apparently at some point along its travel in time the saying got mistranslated. And it seems that Erasmus, that scholarly 16th century humanist and star of the Northern Renaissance, who was the offender. Erasmus in his Latin translation of the Pandora story changed the Greek pithos to pyxis, which means “box”. Not satisfied with messing with the original story in this way, Erasmus proceeded to substitute Epimetheus♘for Pandora as the unleasher of the container’s momentous contents. So there you have it, Pandora’s box, Pandora’s jar or Epimetheus’ jar? Take your pick!

♘ whose name means “afterthought” or “hindsight”. Epimetheus was the consort of Pandora and appeared as the recipient of the jar in some versions of the popular myth