In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod gives Pandora a detailed origin story.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet traditionally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days presents practical advice about farming and justice alongside myths explaining why human life includes labor and suffering. Pandora’s creation appears in that moral and theological setting.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora in Theogony, but Works and Days contains the fuller narrative of her creation, marriage to Epimetheus, and the opening of the container. These poems are among the earliest surviving literary sources for the myth.
The story is often mistakenly attributed to Homer because both writers belong to the earliest period of Greek epic poetry. However, the surviving Pandora narrative is specifically associated with Hesiod. Later authors, artists, and translators expanded and altered the episode in many different ways.