Which ancient Greek poem tells the main Pandora story involving her jar?

The ancient Greek poem that tells the main Pandora story involving her jar is Works and Days.

Works and Days is attributed to Hesiod, a Greek poet traditionally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The poem combines advice about farming, justice, work, and proper conduct with mythological explanations of human hardship.

Its Pandora episode describes how Zeus ordered a woman to be fashioned and how suffering entered human life after her storage vessel was opened. The poem does not use the modern English title “Pandora’s box”; translations and later retellings popularized that wording.

Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, but the fuller account involving the vessel and the troubles released from it appears in Works and Days. That distinction helps separate the two ancient sources and explains why the poem is the standard citation for the familiar version of the myth.