Hesiod first recorded the surviving literary version of Pandora and the container holding humanity’s troubles.
The story appears in two works attributed to Hesiod: the Theogony and Works and Days. Works and Days provides the fuller account of Pandora’s creation, her arrival among humans, and the opening of the storage vessel from which troubles spread.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet traditionally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His poems are among the earliest surviving Greek literary works and are important sources for Greek myth, genealogy, farming advice, and ideas about justice.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” can obscure the wording of the oldest account. Hesiod describes a pithos, usually translated as a large jar or storage vessel. The familiar box developed through later translation and artistic tradition. Homer is also an early Greek poet, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the canonical Pandora story associated with the jar.