The ancient Greek poem Works and Days tells the story of Pandora’s creation and the opening of her container. It is attributed to Hesiod, who probably composed it in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.
Works and Days is not primarily a narrative epic. It combines advice about farming, justice, proper conduct, seasonal work, and the relationship between gods and humans. The Pandora episode appears within this wider moral and practical poem as an explanation for the burdens that affect human life.
Hesiod also wrote the Theogony, a major account of divine genealogy and cosmic succession. Because both poems concern gods and origins, readers sometimes identify the Theogony as the source of the Pandora story, but the complete familiar episode belongs to Works and Days.
The poem is one of the earliest surviving Greek literary works. Its version of Pandora strongly influenced later European literature, art, translations, and the modern expression “Pandora’s box.”