In which Hesiod poem is Pandora’s jar-opening story told in the greatest detail?

Works and Days tells Pandora’s jar-opening story in the greatest detail. Hesiod uses the episode in a poem about labor, justice, farming, and the difficult condition of human life.

The poem explains why mortals experience suffering and toil after the gods send Pandora. When she opens the container, troubles spread among humanity, while hope remains inside after the lid is closed. This account supplies the familiar narrative structure behind the modern expression “Pandora’s box.”

Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, but that version is shorter and focuses more on her creation and the divine context. The Theogony is primarily a genealogy of the gods, so the jar episode receives less narrative space there.

Works and Days is written in dactylic hexameter, the same basic meter associated with Greek epic poetry. Its practical and moral themes distinguish it from Homeric heroic epic.