Around what date was Hesiod’s Works and Days, containing the Pandora story, composed?

Hesiod’s Works and Days, containing the Pandora story, was composed around 700 BCE.

The poem is one of the earliest surviving works of Greek literature and is usually dated to the early seventh century BCE. Its exact year cannot be established, so “around 700 BCE” is more accurate than a precise modern-style date. The work combines advice about farming, justice, family conflict, seasonal timing, and religious observance.

The Pandora episode appears in the poem as part of Hesiod’s explanation for why human life contains suffering and hard labor. It is not presented as an isolated fairy tale; it supports the poem’s wider reflections on work, morality, and the decline of human conditions.

Hesiod’s Theogony also contains a related account of Pandora’s creation, but Works and Days is the poem most commonly associated with the jar episode. The two texts are ancient Greek poetic sources, not later retellings.