Hesiod first tells the story of Pandora in detail in his poems Works and Days and Theogony.
Works and Days presents Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire. The Theogony gives a shorter account of her creation and marriage to Epimetheus. These poems were composed in ancient Greece, probably during the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” does not appear in Hesiod’s original Greek account. Hesiod describes a large storage jar, later called a pithos, which Pandora opens. The word “box” became standard much later through translation and retelling.
Hesiod is often grouped with Homer as one of the foundational poets of archaic Greece, but the surviving Pandora narratives are specifically associated with Hesiod rather than Homer.