Hesiod gives the earliest surviving full account of Pandora’s story.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His Works and Days describes Zeus’s creation of Pandora and explains how her arrival brought suffering into the human condition.
The account is part of Hesiod’s wider explanation of why human life involves labor, hardship, and limited resources. Pandora is not simply presented as a villain; she is part of a divine punishment directed at humanity after Prometheus’s theft of fire.
Homer is often associated with early Greek mythology, but the surviving Homeric poems do not provide the full Pandora narrative. Hesiod is therefore the key ancient literary source for the story as it is usually known today.