In Hesiod’s account, Hesiod is the earliest known author to tell the story of Pandora’s jar.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet usually dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. He tells the story in Works and Days, a didactic poem about farming, justice, labor, and the human condition. He also mentions Pandora in Theogony, though the fuller jar narrative belongs to Works and Days.
The poem is one of the principal surviving sources for early Greek mythology. Unlike many modern retellings, it calls the container a pithos, a large storage jar. It also connects Pandora’s creation with Prometheus’s theft of fire and Zeus’s punishment of mortals.
Homer is an understandable wrong answer because he is another foundational Greek poet. However, the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the classic Pandora’s jar episode. Hesiod’s poem is the key early literary source.