Why is Pandora often said to have opened a box when Hesiod described a jar?
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Hesiod
Hesiod, detail of a mosaic by Monnus, 3rd century; in the Rhenish State Museum, Trier, Germany.
In the original accounts by the Greek poet Hesiod, specifically in his work Works and Days, Pandora is described as opening a jar that released miseries and evils upon the world.12
The transformation of this jar into a "box" is attributed to a 16th-century error. During the Renaissance, the humanist Erasmus is believed to have either mistranslated the original Greek term or confused the vessel in Pandora's story with the box featured in the myth of Cupid and Psyche.1