The Pandora myth appears in its earliest surviving literary form in the Works and Days of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod.
Works and Days is a didactic poem generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Hesiod uses the story of Pandora to explain why human life includes toil, illness, and other hardships. The poem presents the myth in the context of advice about justice, farming, labor, and proper conduct.
Hesiod also refers to Pandora-related material in the Theogony, but Works and Days gives the fuller narrative of her creation, marriage, and opening of the vessel. Because the poems survive through later manuscript transmission, exact dating and details of the earliest oral versions cannot be established with certainty.
The myth is often casually attributed to Homer because both poets are foundational figures of archaic Greek literature. However, the surviving Pandora narrative is specifically associated with Hesiod, not with either of Homer’s epics.