Hesiod gives the fullest early account of Pandora’s box in his poem Works and Days.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet usually dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days combines farming advice, moral instruction, and myths about the human condition, including the story of Pandora and the release of suffering into the world.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora-related material in the Theogony, but Works and Days supplies the more developed narrative. It connects the myth to Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire for mortals.
The account is not a modern short story with one fixed title or standardized sequence. Later Greek and Roman writers adapted details, while artists and translators reshaped the container into the familiar “box.” Hesiod’s poems remain the key early literary evidence for the myth.