Hesiod first tells the surviving detailed story of Pandora’s creation and jar.
Hesiod was an early Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. His Works and Days contains the account in which Zeus orders Pandora’s creation and her arrival at Epimetheus’s home.
Hesiod also refers to Pandora in Theogony, but the fuller narrative of her creation and the release of evils appears in Works and Days. The two poems are important sources for early Greek ideas about gods, labor, justice, and the human condition.
Homer is another major early Greek poet, but the Pandora episode is not told in the Homeric epics. Later Greek and Roman writers expanded, adapted, or reinterpreted the myth, helping turn it into the familiar “Pandora’s box” story.