Hesiod first gave a full literary account of Pandora’s creation and container.
The story appears in two poems attributed to Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days. Theogony describes Pandora’s creation and the punishment of humanity, while Works and Days provides the more developed narrative of the container being opened and the release of evils.
Hesiod probably composed these works in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, although exact dates remain uncertain. He is one of the earliest Greek poets whose works survive in substantial form, alongside Homer. His poems are especially important for Greek genealogies of the gods, accounts of cosmic order, and explanations of human labor and suffering.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” is therefore not the wording of Hesiod’s original story. His Greek text refers to a pithos, a large jar. Later translation and reception transformed that jar into a box, while Hesiod’s poems preserved the earliest surviving literary framework for the myth.