Hesiod calls Pandora the first woman in his surviving account. His poems Works and Days and Theogony are the earliest surviving literary sources for the Pandora myth, and they present her creation as part of Zeus’s response to Prometheus’s theft of fire.
In Works and Days, Hesiod describes the gods contributing qualities to Pandora before she is sent to Epimetheus. The narrative then connects her opening of a vessel with the spread of troubles among humans. The poem also links Pandora with the origin of women as a social and economic burden, reflecting the assumptions of archaic Greek society rather than a modern historical account.
Homer does not provide the surviving Pandora narrative. Pindar and Sophocles belong to later Greek literary traditions and are not the primary source for this particular creation story.
Modern readers should distinguish Hesiod’s literary myth from later artistic and philosophical interpretations. The familiar expression “Pandora’s box” became especially influential after later translations and retellings, while Hesiod’s original wording concerns a different kind of container.