Theogony is the ancient Greek work that mentions Pandora’s creation before the fuller jar episode in Works and Days. Both poems are attributed to Hesiod and are among the earliest surviving literary sources for the myth.
Theogony is primarily a genealogy and origin account of the gods. It describes the succession of divine generations and the rise of Zeus. Near its account of the conflict involving Prometheus, it introduces the creation of the first woman, but it does not provide the same extended narrative of the opened container found in Works and Days.
Works and Days develops the story further while discussing labor, justice, and the difficult conditions of mortal life. Because the two poems differ in emphasis, readers sometimes assume that the entire familiar Pandora story appears in one single ancient text. In fact, the fullest early version is assembled by comparing the passages.
Theogony is also distinct from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Those epics belong to a different poetic tradition and do not provide the canonical early account of Pandora’s container. The Hesiodic poems are the essential literary sources for tracing the myth’s earliest surviving form.