Works and Days tells the story of Pandora as part of an explanation for why humans must work.
The poem, attributed to Hesiod and generally dated to around 700 BCE, combines practical advice about farming with moral and religious teaching. Its Pandora episode follows the theft of fire by Prometheus and explains the arrival of toil, sickness, and other hardships among humans.
This context distinguishes Works and Days from Theogony, another poem attributed to Hesiod. Theogony also refers to Pandora-related material, but Works and Days provides the fuller narrative about her creation, arrival, and the opening of the container.
The poem is not a modern myth collection. It is an archaic Greek work concerned with justice, labor, agriculture, and proper conduct. Pandora’s story functions within that larger argument about the difficult conditions of human life.