Hesiod first records the Pandora story in his surviving works. The myth appears in his poem Works and Days and is also discussed in Theogony, making Hesiod the earliest surviving literary source for the character and her creation.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet traditionally dated to around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His works combine mythology with reflections on labor, justice, family conflict, and the relationship between gods and humans. In Works and Days, Pandora’s arrival follows the story of Prometheus’s theft of fire and explains why human life contains toil and suffering.
The story is often treated as if it were primarily a later Roman or medieval invention because the phrase “Pandora’s box” became famous much later. However, the core narrative is already present in Hesiod. Ovid and later European writers helped transmit and reshape Greek myths, but they are not the earliest surviving literary source for Pandora. Hesiod is the canonical answer for the first recorded version.