Works and Days gives the fullest account of Pandora’s creation and jar-opening story. Hesiod describes Zeus ordering Pandora’s creation, the gods providing her gifts, her arrival at Epimetheus’s home, and the release of human troubles from the vessel.
Works and Days is an archaic Greek didactic poem concerned with farming, justice, labor, and the conditions of human life. The Pandora episode supports its broader explanation of why people must work and endure suffering. The poem also connects the story to Prometheus’s theft of fire and Zeus’s response to that act.
Hesiod’s Theogony mentions Pandora but does not provide the same extended narrative treatment. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are different epic poems and are not the source of the standard jar episode. Identifying Works and Days matters because later summaries often blend details from multiple traditions while presenting them as one uniform ancient text.