Hesiod wrote Pandora’s creation story in Works and Days. This didactic poem, probably composed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, contains the earliest surviving literary accounts of Pandora.
Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, although the two poems emphasize different aspects of the myth. Works and Days presents Pandora in the context of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus’s theft of fire. The Theogony focuses more briefly on her role in the divine-human conflict.
Hesiod was one of ancient Greece’s foundational poets, traditionally paired with Homer. Unlike Homeric epic, Works and Days includes advice about farming, justice, work, and social conduct. Pandora’s story is embedded in that moral and cultural setting rather than standing alone as an isolated fairy tale. Later writers and artists greatly expanded the episode.