Hesiod first describes Pandora’s creation in the surviving ancient literary tradition. His poem Works and Days contains the fullest early account of her fashioning by the gods and the opening of her storage jar.
Hesiod was an archaic Greek poet generally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The Pandora episode appears in a poem concerned with labor, justice, agriculture, and the difficult conditions of human life. It connects those conditions to Zeus’s punishment after Prometheus took fire for mortals.
Homer is another foundational Greek poet, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the detailed Pandora creation narrative associated with Hesiod. Sappho and Pindar wrote in different genres and periods. Later authors, artists, and translators expanded or altered the story, but Hesiod remains its key early literary source.