In Hesiod’s account, the Greek poet Hesiod first names Pandora as a figure in the human condition.
Pandora appears in two surviving works attributed to Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days. Theogony gives a shorter account of her creation and role, while Works and Days provides the fuller narrative involving the container and the spread of evils among humans. These poems are among the earliest surviving Greek literary sources for the story.
Hesiod is generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, although the exact dates remain uncertain. He is traditionally associated with Boeotia in central Greece and is often discussed alongside Homer as one of the earliest Greek poets whose works survive substantially.
The myth is sometimes casually called a Homeric story, but Pandora does not play a central role in the surviving Homeric epics. Hesiod’s poems are therefore the key ancient literary evidence, even though later writers, artists, and translators greatly expanded the story’s cultural reach.