It is confirmed in the new era by an Aesopic fable recorded by Babrius, in which the gods send the jar containing blessings to humans.
The poem seems to hint at a myth in which the jar contained blessings rather than evils. Giulio Bonasone’s 16th century engraving of Epimetheus opening the fatal jar In his version the box is opened by Epimetheus, whose name means 'Afterthought' – or as Hesiod comments, "he whom mistakes made wise". The context in which the story appeared was Erasmus' collection of proverbs, the Adagia (1508), in illustration of the Latin saying Malo accepto stultus sapit (from experiencing trouble a fool is made wise). The mistranslation of pithos is usually attributed to the 16th-century humanist Erasmus who, in his Latin account of the story of Pandora, changed the Greek pithos to pyxis, meaning "box".
Many scholars see a close analogy between Pandora herself, who was made from clay, and the clay jar which dispenses evils. Pithoi were used for storage of wine, oil, grain or other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying, from which it was believed souls escaped and necessarily returned.
The word translated as "box" was actually a large jar (πίθος pithos) in Greek.
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