Hesiod tells the fullest early version of the Pandora myth. The story appears especially in his didactic poem Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece, and is also connected with material in his Theogony.
Works and Days presents Pandora within a discussion of Zeus, Prometheus, labor, and the troubles that affect human life. Hesiod describes Pandora’s construction by the gods and the opening of the large vessel associated with her name. His account is the main ancient literary source behind the later expression “Pandora’s box.”
Homer does not provide the familiar Pandora narrative. That distinction matters because modern summaries sometimes group all major Greek myths under Homer’s name. Hesiod, rather than Homer, is the poet directly associated with the earliest surviving literary account of Pandora.