Hesiod is credited with the earliest surviving literary versions of Pandora’s story.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His works Theogony and Works and Days contain the surviving archaic Greek accounts that establish Pandora’s role in the origin of human suffering. These poems are among the earliest substantial works of Greek literature preserved from the period.
Hesiod is often discussed alongside Homer, but their surviving poems serve different purposes. Homer’s epics focus on heroic narratives such as the Trojan War and Odysseus’s return, while Hesiod’s poetry includes divine genealogy, moral instruction, farming, justice, and explanations of the human condition. Later writers expanded and transformed the Pandora story, but Hesiod is the essential ancient literary source for its best-known form.