The Greek poet Hesiod first recorded the creation story of Pandora in surviving ancient literature. His account appears chiefly in Works and Days, a didactic poem concerned with labor, justice, farming, and the human condition.
Hesiod describes Pandora as a woman fashioned by the gods after Zeus’s conflict with Prometheus. The gods equip her with various attributes before she is sent to Epimetheus. Her arrival and the opening of the container explain the presence of hardship in human life within Hesiod’s mythic framework.
Hesiod is usually dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. He lived near the beginning of Greek literary history, and his works are among the earliest surviving Greek poems alongside those attributed to Homer.
The story is sometimes treated as if it came from a single universally fixed myth, but ancient Greek myths had varying versions. Hesiod’s account is the earliest major written source for Pandora’s creation and the container episode.