Hesiod first described Pandora in the poem Works and Days.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet whose Works and Days contains the fullest early account of Pandora’s creation, arrival, and container. The poem presents the myth in the context of Zeus’s conflict with Prometheus and explains why human life includes toil, suffering, and other hardships.
Works and Days is both a didactic poem and a collection of mythological narratives. Alongside Pandora’s story, it discusses farming, justice, work, social conduct, and the ages of humanity. This combination makes the poem different from an epic narrative focused mainly on heroic warfare.
Hesiod also wrote the Theogony, a major account of the origins and genealogy of the gods. Readers sometimes attribute every Greek myth to Homer because of Homer’s fame, but Pandora’s principal early literary source is Hesiod. The poem is generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE.