Which ancient Greek poem first names Pandora in its surviving text?

Hesiod’s Works and Days is the ancient Greek poem that names Pandora in its surviving text.

Hesiod composed Works and Days in archaic Greece, probably around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The poem combines advice about farming and justice with myths explaining why human life contains toil and suffering. Pandora’s creation and the opening of her storage jar appear in this broader account of humanity’s condition.

Hesiod also tells a related story in Theogony, but the woman there is not named Pandora in the surviving passage. This distinction matters because modern retellings often merge details from both poems. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” is also later than Hesiod’s wording.

Works and Days is written in dactylic hexameter, the same broad meter used in Homeric epic. Its audience would have recognized the story as an explanation of the hardships that define ordinary human life, not simply as a tale about curiosity.