Hesiod, the earliest known source for Pandora’s myth, probably lived in the 8th century BCE.
Scholars usually place Hesiod around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Exact dates are uncertain because almost no biographical information about him can be confirmed independently. His poems are among the earliest surviving works of Greek literature.
The Pandora account appears in Works and Days, a poem combining myth, moral instruction, farming advice, and reflections on justice and labor. Hesiod’s Theogony provides a related account of the gods and also refers to Pandora.
Dating Hesiod matters because later versions of the story depend on a long tradition of retelling. The ancient text does not use the English phrase “Pandora’s box,” and its vessel is usually identified from the Greek as a pithos. The familiar version is therefore a later cultural development based on an archaic Greek poem.