Hesiod first told the complete surviving literary story of Pandora’s jar.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His Works and Days contains the detailed account in which Zeus sends Pandora, the first woman in the poem’s narrative, and a jar holding troubles that are released into the human world.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, though the two poems present related material with different emphases. Works and Days is the key source for the familiar sequence involving Pandora, Epimetheus, the opened container, and the remaining hope.
Homer is another major early Greek poet, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the complete Pandora-jar story. Later Greek and Roman writers, artists, translators, and modern authors expanded or altered the myth. The story’s modern form is therefore a layered tradition, but Hesiod remains its foundational literary source.