Hesiod wrote the earliest surviving literary account of Pandora.
His version appears in Works and Days, a Greek poem usually dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. In the story, Zeus orders the creation of Pandora as punishment for humanity receiving fire from Prometheus. The gods give her various gifts, and she becomes connected with the release of troubles into the human world.
Hesiod also refers to Pandora in the Theogony, although that poem provides less narrative detail about her. The two poems are the earliest surviving Greek literary sources for the myth, making Hesiod the key ancient source for Pandora’s story.
A common mix-up is attributing the story to Homer, whose epics are older or roughly contemporary in traditional dating but do not contain the surviving Pandora narrative. The familiar English expression “Pandora’s box” also differs from Hesiod’s original account, which describes a large storage jar.