Which ancient Greek poem gives the longest surviving account of Pandora’s creation?

Works and Days gives the longest surviving ancient Greek account of Pandora’s creation.

The poem is attributed to Hesiod and combines practical advice, moral instruction, farming guidance, and stories about the human condition. Its Pandora passage explains how Zeus arranged for a woman to be created after Prometheus’s conflict with him. The gods contribute different qualities, and Pandora is then sent to Epimetheus.

Hesiod’s Theogony also mentions Pandora, but its treatment is shorter. Theogony concentrates primarily on the genealogy and origins of the gods, whereas Works and Days uses Pandora to explain why suffering and difficult work entered human life.

The poem is also important because it describes the vessel as a pithos, a large storage jar. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later, especially through Latin and European reinterpretation. Thus, Works and Days is the key ancient source for both Pandora’s creation and the myth’s moral setting.