Works and Days contains Hesiod’s fullest surviving account of Pandora and her jar.
The poem is an archaic Greek didactic work traditionally attributed to Hesiod. It combines advice about farming and justice with myths explaining why human life includes labor, suffering, and uncertainty. Pandora appears within that moral and social framework rather than as an isolated adventure story.
Works and Days describes the creation of Pandora, her presentation to Epimetheus, and the opening of the storage jar. The poem’s account is the main ancient source for the episode usually called Pandora’s box. Hesiod also describes successive ages of humanity, including the decline from a golden age into harder conditions.
Theogony, another poem attributed to Hesiod, mentions Pandora-related material but does not provide the same extended narrative. Readers sometimes merge the two poems because both discuss divine order, Prometheus, and the origins of human hardship. The jar story is most specifically associated with Works and Days.