Hesiod first told the Pandora story in surviving ancient Greek literature. The myth appears in his Theogony and receives a fuller account in Works and Days, probably composed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.
Hesiod was a poet from archaic Greece, traditionally associated with Boeotia. Unlike Homeric epic, his Works and Days combines myth with advice about farming, justice, labor, and social conduct. The Pandora episode forms part of his explanation for why human beings experience toil and suffering.
The Theogony gives a shorter account focused on the gods and the creation of Pandora. Works and Days adds the story of Prometheus’s theft of fire, Pandora’s arrival among humans, and the opening of her container.
Later writers and artists greatly expanded the myth, but Hesiod remains the earliest surviving literary source. Claims about an even earlier oral version cannot be established with the same certainty because no earlier written account survives.