Around what date was Hesiod’s account of Pandora in Works and Days composed?

Hesiod’s account of Pandora in Works and Days was composed around 700 BC.

Works and Days is one of the two major surviving poems attributed to Hesiod, alongside the Theogony. Scholars generally place Hesiod in the late eighth or early seventh century BC, and Works and Days is commonly dated to about 700 BC. The exact year is not known.

The poem combines practical advice about farming and justice with mythological stories. Its account of Pandora appears in a discussion of why human life contains hardship. In the narrative, Zeus creates Pandora as part of a punishment connected with Prometheus and the theft of fire.

Dating the poem helps place the Pandora story in its historical setting. It belongs to archaic Greece, centuries before the classical plays of Athens and far earlier than modern versions of the phrase. Because ancient poems were transmitted through manuscripts, scholars normally give an approximate date rather than a precise publication year.