Hesiod gives the fullest surviving ancient Greek literary account of Pandora’s jar. His Works and Days describes Pandora’s creation, her arrival among humans, and the opening of the container that releases evils into the world.
Hesiod was an archaic Greek poet traditionally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The Pandora episode appears within a discussion of the human condition, including labor, suffering, and the consequences of Zeus’s conflict with Prometheus. Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, though that reference is shorter.
Homer is often named alongside Hesiod as one of ancient Greece’s great early poets, but the best-known Pandora narrative is not from the Iliad or Odyssey. The ancient account also concerns a jar, or pithos, rather than the box shown in later European art. That translation history explains why the common modern phrase differs from Hesiod’s original wording.