Hesiod first recorded the surviving literary version of Pandora’s story.
The account appears in two poems associated with Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days. Theogony briefly describes Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity, while Works and Days gives the fuller narrative involving her creation, marriage, jar, and the release of troubles.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet traditionally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His works are among the oldest surviving Greek literary texts, although the exact dates and details of his life remain uncertain. Pandora’s story is therefore preserved through archaic Greek poetry rather than through a contemporary historical record.
Homer is sometimes named by mistake because both poets belong to the earliest period of Greek literature. However, the surviving Pandora narrative is specifically associated with Hesiod. Later writers, artists, and translators changed the story’s emphasis, especially by turning the jar into a box and treating hope as an uncomplicated blessing.