Hesiod first told the story of Pandora’s box in detail.
The earliest surviving accounts appear in Hesiod’s eighth-century BCE poems Works and Days and Theogony. In Works and Days, Pandora is created as part of Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus’s theft of fire and for humanity’s receiving that gift.
Hesiod’s version does not use the modern expression “Pandora’s box.” It describes a large storage jar that Pandora opens, releasing troubles into the world. The jar became a box in later European retellings because of a translation tradition.
Hesiod is one of ancient Greece’s earliest known poets, alongside Homer. His poems are especially important because they preserve myths about the gods, the origins of human suffering, farming, justice, and the ages of humanity.