Hesiod is the ancient Greek poet who first names Pandora in the surviving written myth. His works preserve the earliest substantial literary accounts of her creation and the opening of the container.
Pandora appears especially in Works and Days, a didactic poem usually dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Hesiod also refers to her in the Theogony, although the narrative details differ between the poems. In Works and Days, Zeus’s punishment of humanity follows Prometheus’s theft of fire, and Pandora’s arrival introduces the evils that had previously been kept away from humans.
Hesiod is sometimes confused with Homer because both poets belong to archaic Greek literature and are traditionally associated with roughly similar periods. However, Homer’s surviving epics do not provide the standard Pandora creation story. Later Greek and Roman writers, artists, and translators expanded the myth, but Hesiod is its key early literary source.