Works and Days contains Hesiod’s fullest surviving account of Pandora’s creation and the opened jar.
The poem is an archaic Greek work traditionally attributed to Hesiod. It combines advice about farming and justice with mythological stories, including the account of Prometheus, Pandora, and the human condition. The Pandora episode appears as part of Zeus’s response to the theft of fire.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora-related material in the Theogony, but the narrative in Works and Days gives the more developed sequence: the gods create Pandora, she is sent to Epimetheus, and the container is opened. This is why the work is the primary ancient literary source for the familiar story.
The title does not describe a myth collection. Works and Days is a didactic poem concerned with practical labor, moral conduct, and divine justice, with myths serving broader arguments about human life.