Hesiod first recorded the Pandora myth in *Works and Days*.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His *Works and Days* presents Pandora within a story explaining why human life includes toil, sickness, and other troubles. The poem is one of the earliest surviving Greek literary works to tell the episode in detail.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the *Theogony*, but that account is much shorter and does not provide the same narrative treatment. The two poems are therefore often discussed together when tracing the myth's earliest literary form.
Later retellings commonly call the object a box, although Hesiod described a large storage jar. The familiar English expression developed much later through translation and artistic adaptation, while Hesiod's original story belongs to the mythology of the Greek Archaic period.