Works and Days gives the fullest early account of Pandora’s creation and vessel. The poem is attributed to Hesiod and combines farming advice, moral instruction, myth, and reflections on justice and human hardship.
In its Pandora passage, Zeus orders the gods to create a woman as a punishment connected with Prometheus’s theft of fire. The narrative describes her preparation and the arrival of the vessel whose opening releases evils among humans. This is the principal early source for the story commonly called Pandora’s box.
Hesiod’s other major poem, Theogony, mentions Pandora but does not provide the same extended narrative. A common mistake is to treat Theogony as the complete source. The Greek word used by Hesiod refers to a storage jar or vessel, which later tradition transformed into the familiar “box.”