In his Works and Days he gives the oldest known literary version of the story . There is an older story that tells that urns and jars can contain blessings and evils which is told in Homer 's Illiad : The immortals know no care , yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow ; on the floor of Zeus ' palace there stand two urns , the one filled with evil gifts , and the other with good ones . In the seventh century BC , Hesiod , both in his Theogony ( briefly , without naming Pandora outright , line 570 ) and in Works and Days , gives the earliest literary version of the Pandora story ; however , there is an older mention of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon mankind in Homer 's Iliad : The immortals know no care , yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow ; on the floor of Zeus ' palace there stand two urns , the one filled with evil gifts , and the other with good ones .