Hesiod’s Works and Days gives the fullest surviving ancient version of the Pandora story.
Works and Days is a didactic Greek poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod, who probably lived around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. It combines advice about farming and justice with myths explaining why human life contains labor and suffering.
The poem presents Pandora’s creation, her marriage to Epimetheus, and the opening of the storage vessel. Hesiod also connects the story with Zeus’s punishment after Prometheus took fire for humans. The account is one of the earliest surviving literary explanations for the human condition in Greek tradition.
Hesiod’s Theogony mentions Pandora-related material but does not provide the same extended narrative. The Iliad and Odyssey are Homeric epics and do not serve as the principal ancient source for this myth. The Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses is also important for classical mythology, but it is not the source of Pandora’s box.