Greek to Me: Pandora

Pandora never had a box.

Hesiod wrote the story down around 700 BC, and his word was pithos: a storage jar about as tall as she was, and nobody in his poem tells her not to open it. The box arrived in 1508, when Erasmus retold the story in Latin and wrote pyxis, a little box (most likely with Psyche's box in mind), and in his version her husband is the one who opens it. Painters took it from there. On one thing Hesiod and the retellings agree: when the lid went back on, hope stayed inside. It is a big jar. There is room.

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