Hesiod wrote the main surviving account of Pandora’s jar in Works and Days.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days is a didactic poem concerned with farming, justice, labor, and the conditions of human life. Its account of Pandora appears while explaining the origin of suffering and the hardships faced by mortals.
Hesiod also tells a related version of Pandora’s story in the Theogony, though the two poems emphasize different aspects. These texts are among the earliest surviving literary sources for Greek mythology, but they do not function like a single modern canon. Later authors, artists, translators, and folklorists added details or altered the vessel from a jar into a box.
Because Hesiod’s wording is ancient and compact, translators sometimes differ over the meaning of particular lines, especially the role of hope. The broad narrative, however, is firmly associated with his poetry.