Hesiod first recorded Pandora’s story in surviving Greek literature.
The myth appears in two poems attributed to Hesiod: the Theogony and Works and Days. These poems were composed in archaic Greece, probably around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Hesiod presents Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire for mortals.
The Theogony gives a brief account, while Works and Days supplies more detail about Pandora’s creation, gifts, and the opening of her container. The poems are among the earliest surviving Greek literary sources for the story.
A common mix-up is crediting Homer, whose epics are older or roughly contemporary in traditional dating but do not provide the surviving Pandora narrative. Later Greek and Roman writers expanded or reinterpreted the myth, but Hesiod is the key early source.