Hesiod first described Pandora as the first woman in Greek mythology.
His account appears in two eighth-century BCE poems, Works and Days and Theogony. In Works and Days, Pandora is created by the gods as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire. The story makes her a central figure in explaining why suffering exists in the human world.
Hesiod’s version is the earliest surviving literary account of Pandora. Homer does not tell the Pandora story in the surviving Iliad or Odyssey, although later writers developed related ideas about divine gifts, curiosity, and human misfortune.
A common mix-up is assuming that the familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” comes directly from Hesiod. Hesiod describes a large storage jar, while the box wording became standard much later through translation and artistic tradition.