In Hesiod’s account, which Greek work first tells the story of Pandora’s jar?

In Hesiod’s account, Works and Days first tells the story of Pandora’s jar.

Works and Days is an ancient Greek didactic poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod. Its story of Pandora appears while the poem explains why human life contains toil and hardship. Zeus’s punishment follows Prometheus’s theft of fire, and Pandora becomes the means through which suffering reaches humankind.

Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, but the fuller account of the jar and the release of evils is associated with Works and Days. This distinction matters because people often name the Theogony whenever they recall a Hesiodic myth, even when the specific episode comes from the other poem.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to Homer and do not provide the canonical Pandora-jar narrative. Works and Days is therefore the most specific answer for the source text behind the familiar myth. Its surviving Greek text is one of the oldest literary witnesses to the story.