Hesiod describes Pandora’s creation in his poem Works and Days.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet traditionally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days combines farming advice, moral teaching, myths, and reflections on justice. The Pandora episode appears while Hesiod explains why human life contains toil and suffering.
The other major ancient source is Hesiod’s Theogony, which also mentions Pandora-related events but gives a shorter account. Homer does not provide the familiar full narrative of Pandora’s creation and the opened container. Ovid later retells many Greek myths in Latin, but his Metamorphoses is not the source of the standard Pandora story.
Because later artists and writers expanded the myth, modern versions can differ from Hesiod’s text. When a question asks for the earliest famous literary account, Hesiod is the specific answer supported by the surviving Greek poems.