Hesiod first records the name Pandora in surviving ancient Greek literature. His works Works and Days and Theogony contain the earliest surviving literary accounts connected with Pandora.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. In Works and Days, he gives the fullest surviving version of the story in which Zeus has a woman created and she becomes connected with the release of troubles into the human world.
The name also appears in Theogony, although the treatment differs from the later, more familiar narrative. Scholars compare the two poems to study how the myth developed and how Pandora’s role was presented in different contexts.
Homer is often guessed because the Iliad and Odyssey are the best-known early Greek epics, but the surviving Pandora passages are associated with Hesiod. “First” here means the earliest surviving literary record, not necessarily the date the story was invented.