Hesiod wrote Pandora’s story in both Works and Days and Theogony. These two archaic Greek poems provide the earliest surviving literary accounts of the figure who became central to the Pandora’s box tradition.
In Theogony, Hesiod briefly describes Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire. In Works and Days, he gives a fuller account of her creation, the gifts supplied by the gods, her arrival at Epimetheus’s home, and the opening of the container that releases suffering into the world.
The two accounts are related but not identical in emphasis. Works and Days develops the story as part of a larger explanation of why human life includes hardship, labor, and trouble. Theogony places it within a broader account of the gods, divine succession, and Zeus’s authority.
Hesiod is distinct from Homer, whose epics do not provide the detailed Pandora narrative. Later retellings often blend details from Hesiod with Roman, artistic, and modern interpretations.