Which ancient Greek poem tells how Pandora’s jar released human suffering?

Works and Days tells how Pandora’s jar released human suffering.

The poem is attributed to Hesiod and is one of the earliest surviving works of Greek literature. It combines practical advice about farming and seafaring with reflections on justice, labor, the ages of humanity, and relations between gods and mortals. Pandora’s creation appears within that broader moral and cosmological argument.

The relevant episode follows Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus obtains fire. Pandora is fashioned and sent to Epimetheus, and the jar becomes the source through which destructive conditions enter human life. Hope’s position inside the jar gives the conclusion its distinctive ambiguity.

The Iliad and Odyssey are major early Greek poems, but neither contains the complete Pandora episode. The Theogony, another poem associated with Hesiod, includes related material but is not the principal surviving narrative of the jar. That distinction matters when identifying the most specific ancient literary source.