Hesiod first recorded the Pandora story in detail among surviving ancient Greek sources.
The key accounts are in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, poems generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days provides the fuller narrative of Pandora’s creation, her arrival at Epimetheus’s home, and the release of troubles from the storage vessel.
Hesiod was a Boeotian poet traditionally associated with Ascra. Unlike epic poetry centered on heroic warfare, Works and Days focuses heavily on farming, justice, labor, and the difficult conditions of human life. The Pandora story appears within that wider explanation of why mortals must work and suffer.
Homer is often named as a possible contemporary or near-contemporary of Hesiod, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the detailed Pandora narrative. Later writers, artists, and translators expanded the story into the forms familiar today.