Hesiod’s Works and Days, the earliest major source for Pandora’s myth, was composed around 700 BC.
The poem is an archaic Greek work combining farming advice, moral instruction, mythology, and reflections on justice. Its account of Pandora appears in a discussion of why human life contains labor and suffering. The poem therefore gives the myth a broader explanation than the isolated phrase “Pandora’s box” suggests.
The date is approximate because Hesiod’s life and the composition of his poems cannot be fixed to a precise year. Scholars generally place Works and Days in the early seventh century BC, with around 700 BC used as a convenient reference date.
Theogony, another poem attributed to Hesiod, also discusses Pandora-related material, but Works and Days provides the fuller narrative of Pandora’s creation, arrival, and the opening of the vessel.