The myth of Pandora's box is known to us in the retelling of Hesiod, from the poem Works and Days. In Greek mythology, Pandora is the first woman on earth, which Hephaestus fashioned from clay so that she would bring misfortune to people. He did this at the request of Zeus - who wanted to punish people with the hands of Pandora because Prometheus stole fire from the gods for them.

Pandora became the wife of Prometheus' younger brother. One day she learned that there was something in their house that could not be opened. Curious Pandora discovered this, and numerous troubles and misfortunes scattered around the world. Pandora, in horror, tried to close the dangerous container, but it was too late - evil had already seeped into the world; only hope remained at the bottom, which people were thus deprived of.

In Russian, the name of the object from which all misfortunes flew out has become a stable expression - about a person who has done something irreparable, with large-scale negative consequences, they say: "He opened Pandora's box."

However, Hesiod is not talking about a box or a casket, but about a pithos, a vessel for storing food, which can be very large - even as tall as a person. Unlike the "clay" Pandora, the repository of troubles was made of durable metal - Hesiod calls it indestructible.

Where did the box come from? Most likely, the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, who translated Hesiod into Latin in the 16th century, is to blame. He mistook “Pythos” for “pixis” (in Greek - “box”), perhaps remembering the myth of Psyche, who brought a box of incense from the underworld, at the wrong time. Then this translation error was fixed by famous artists of the 18th-19th centuries (for example, Dante Gabriel Rossetti), who depicted Pandora with a box.