Hesiod tells the Pandora’s Box jar-opening story in Works and Days.
Works and Days is an ancient Greek poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod, who probably lived around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The poem combines farming advice, moral instruction, and myths explaining why human life includes toil and suffering. Its account of Pandora is the earliest surviving literary version of the story usually associated with the phrase “Pandora’s box.”
Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, but the two poems present different details. Works and Days describes a sealed storage jar containing evils, while the Theogony focuses more on Pandora’s creation and her role in Zeus’s punishment of humanity. The modern phrase uses “box” because later retellings translated or adapted the Greek vessel into a box, although Hesiod’s word was pithos, a large jar.
Hesiod is sometimes confused with Homer because both are foundational early Greek poets, but they are associated with different surviving works and themes.