Hesiod is traditionally credited with the first surviving account of Pandora’s myth.
The story appears most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days, an archaic Greek poem concerned with farming, justice, labor, and relations between gods and humans. Hesiod also mentions Pandora in the Theogony, though the Works and Days contains the well-known narrative of her creation and the opening of the vessel.
Hesiod is generally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. He is often discussed alongside Homer as one of the earliest named Greek poets whose works survive, but the two writers have different literary concerns. Homer’s epics focus primarily on heroic narratives, while Hesiod frequently explains cosmic origins, social order, and the hardships of ordinary work.
Later Greek and Roman writers adapted Pandora’s story, and modern retellings often blend details from different sources. Hesiod remains the key source for the central sequence: Prometheus’s conflict with Zeus, Pandora’s creation, the forbidden vessel, and the release of human afflictions.