Hesiod first tells the Pandora myth in surviving Greek literature in Works and Days.
Works and Days is a didactic poem generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Its themes include justice, farming, labor, morality, and the difficult conditions of human life. The Pandora episode appears in the poem’s account of how Zeus punished humanity after Prometheus stole fire.
Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, though the Works and Days version provides the fuller narrative sequence involving her creation, marriage to Epimetheus, and the opening of the container. Because Hesiod’s poems are among the earliest surviving Greek literary works, they are the key ancient sources for the myth.
Homer is often named as a possible answer because he is another famous early Greek poet, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the standard Pandora story. The myth’s best-known literary source is Hesiod.