Hesiod’s Works and Days contains the earliest surviving literary version of Pandora’s story.
Works and Days is a didactic poem attributed to the Greek poet Hesiod, generally dated to the seventh or eighth century BCE. It combines practical advice about farming and justice with myths explaining why human life includes toil and suffering. Pandora’s story appears in this moral and agricultural setting rather than as an isolated fairy tale.
Hesiod also wrote the Theogony, a major genealogy of the gods, but the Pandora narrative is presented in detail in Works and Days. The poem links Pandora’s creation and the opening of her storage jar to Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire.
Later authors, translators, artists, and popular culture reshaped the story. As a result, many modern retellings omit its connection with work, justice, and the consequences of divine punishment. The poem’s ancient title is often translated as Works and Days, although editions may use slightly different English capitalization or punctuation.