Hesiod is the ancient Greek poet who first uses the name Pandora in a surviving literary text.
Hesiod tells Pandora’s story in two works, Theogony and Works and Days, composed in the archaic period. In these poems, Zeus orders the creation of a woman as part of his response to Prometheus’s theft of fire and the deception involving sacrificial portions.
The two accounts are related but not identical. Works and Days gives the fuller narrative of Pandora’s formation, marriage to Epimetheus, and opening of the storage vessel. Theogony is briefer and focuses more on the consequences for humanity and the role of the gods.
Homer does not provide the surviving literary account of Pandora that readers commonly know. Many later Greek and Roman writers adapt myths from earlier traditions, but Hesiod’s poems are the key early evidence for Pandora as a named figure.