Hesiod wrote the earliest surviving literary versions of the Pandora myth. His poems Works and Days and Theogony, generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, provide the key ancient accounts.
Works and Days gives the fullest narrative of Pandora’s creation, marriage to Epimetheus, and the opening of the container. Theogony contains a related account that focuses more directly on the divine plan and the consequences of Prometheus’s conflict with Zeus.
Hesiod is often grouped with Homer as one of the foundational poets of ancient Greek literature, but the Pandora story is not a Homeric episode. Later writers, artists, and translators expanded the myth, while modern popular culture standardized the phrase “Pandora’s box.” The surviving evidence for the original literary story comes chiefly from Hesiod.