Hesiod’s Works and Days tells the story of Pandora’s creation and the opening of her jar.
The poem is an archaic Greek didactic work traditionally attributed to Hesiod, probably composed around the seventh century BCE. It combines advice about farming, justice, work, and proper conduct with myths explaining humanity’s difficult condition.
The Pandora episode appears after Zeus punishes humanity for Prometheus’s theft of fire. The gods fashion Pandora and give her various attributes before she reaches Epimetheus. Hesiod describes her opening a large storage vessel, allowing destructive troubles to escape while hope remains inside.
Theogony, another poem attributed to Hesiod, also mentions Pandora-related events, but Works and Days provides the fuller narrative. A common mistake is to assume that the story first appeared in a later Latin retelling; the Greek version is centuries older than the Latin phrase “Pandora’s box.”