Hesiod wrote the earliest surviving detailed 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 gives the best-known early narrative: Zeus orders the gods to create Pandora after Prometheus steals fire and gives it to humans. The poem also explains her name and the opening of the storage jar.
Hesiod mentions Pandora in more than one work. Works and Days provides the extended story, while the Theogony contains a shorter reference to the woman and the troubles associated with her. Because these poems are among the earliest surviving Greek literary sources, they are central evidence for how the myth was originally presented.
Hesiod and Homer are often grouped together as foundational Greek poets, but Homer did not write the surviving Pandora narrative. Later Greek and Roman writers, as well as European artists, reshaped details of the story, helping produce the modern phrase “Pandora's box.”