Hesiod first gives the detailed surviving account of Pandora’s creation and the opening of her container. His poems Theogony and Works and Days preserve the earliest major literary versions of the story.
Theogony presents Pandora’s creation as part of Zeus’s response to Prometheus and the theft of fire. Works and Days expands the account, describing Pandora’s arrival among humans and the release of troubles from the covered container.
Hesiod lived in archaic Greece, probably around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, although his exact dates are uncertain. His poetry is foundational for Greek genealogies of the gods and stories about the origins of human hardship.
Homer is sometimes associated broadly with Greek mythology, but the detailed Pandora narrative is not supplied by the surviving Homeric epics. Later authors retell or adapt the myth, often adding genealogy and flood traditions.