Which ancient Greek poem says Pandora’s jar released evils into the human world?

Hesiod’s Works and Days says that Pandora’s jar released evils into the human world. The poem presents the event as part of Zeus’s punishment after Prometheus steals fire and gives it to humanity.

In the narrative, Pandora opens the container, allowing destructive forces and hardships to escape. The text then explains why human life is filled with suffering while one remaining element stays within the vessel. This is the source most closely associated with the familiar Pandora story.

Hesiod’s Theogony also mentions Pandora, but its treatment is shorter and does not provide the same full narrative of the opened container. The Iliad and Odyssey, the two major Homeric epics, are not the source of the standard story.

Works and Days is more than a mythological poem. It also discusses farming, justice, labor, moral conduct, and the organization of the year. Pandora’s story appears within that wider reflection on why human existence includes hardship.