Hesiod first told the story of Pandora’s jar in the surviving Greek poem Works and Days.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Works and Days is a didactic poem concerned with farming, justice, labor, family conflict, and the difficult conditions of human life. The Pandora episode appears as part of a larger explanation of why suffering and toil exist in the human world.
Hesiod also composed the Theogony, a major account of the origins and generations of the Greek gods. The two poems are essential sources for early Greek mythology, although they do not present a single complete mythology in the modern sense. Their stories reflect particular poetic aims and traditions.
The phrase “Pandora’s box” is not Hesiod’s wording. His account describes a large storage jar, and later European translations and retellings transformed the vessel into a box. Homer is sometimes named because he is another famous early Greek poet, but the surviving Pandora narrative is associated specifically with Hesiod’s Works and Days.