Hesiod gives the fullest early account of Pandora’s creation.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His poem Works and Days presents Pandora as part of Zeus’s punishment after Prometheus gives fire to humanity. The gods contribute different gifts and adornments, and Hermes brings Pandora to Epimetheus.
Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, but Works and Days supplies the extended narrative about her creation, marriage, and the opening of the jar. These poems are among the earliest surviving literary sources for the story, making Hesiod more important to the original tradition than later Roman or modern retellings.
Homer is another foundational Greek poet, but Pandora is not the central source of this myth in the surviving Homeric epics. Later writers, artists, translators, and filmmakers changed details, including the jar’s transformation into a box. When a question asks for the earliest major literary storyteller of Pandora, Hesiod is the specific answer supported by the surviving texts.