Hesiod first names Pandora in surviving Greek literature.
Hesiod, an early Greek poet traditionally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, tells the Pandora story in two works: Theogony and Works and Days. The Theogony offers a relatively brief account of her creation, while Works and Days explains her role in the release of suffering.
Homer’s surviving epics do not provide the familiar Pandora narrative. Pindar, Sophocles, and later writers contributed to Greek mythology in other contexts, but they are not the source of the earliest surviving literary account of Pandora.
Because Pandora became a major figure in later art, literature, and popular culture, the story can seem older than its earliest surviving written form. Hesiod’s poems preserve the key elements known today: Zeus’s punishment, the crafted woman, Epimetheus, and the container of evils.