Hesiod first included Pandora in a surviving literary account. His poems Works and Days and Theogony provide the earliest known written versions of her myth.
Works and Days gives the fuller narrative: Zeus orders Pandora’s creation after Prometheus steals fire, the gods contribute qualities to her, and her opening of the storage jar releases suffering. Theogony also refers to Pandora and her role in the consequences of Prometheus’s conflict with Zeus, though its treatment is less expansive.
Hesiod lived in the Archaic period, traditionally dated around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Homeric poetry does not preserve the Pandora story in the same form. Later Greek and Roman authors, artists, translators, and modern popular culture expanded and reshaped the myth.