Hesiod is the ancient Greek poet credited with the earliest surviving accounts of Pandora.
Hesiod is generally placed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE and is known primarily through two surviving poems, Works and Days and the Theogony. Both works contain material about Pandora, although the stories differ in emphasis and detail. Works and Days gives the fuller account of the vessel and the release of evils.
Hesiod’s presentation is part of a larger explanation of why human life includes hardship. In the Theogony, Pandora is associated with a deceptive gift sent to humanity after Prometheus’s theft of fire. In Works and Days, her arrival follows a discussion of Zeus’s anger and the consequences that spread through the human world.
Homer is often named as a possible answer because he is another major early Greek poet, but the surviving Homeric epics do not provide the standard Pandora narrative. Sophocles and Aristophanes lived later and are not the source of the foundational version. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” comes from later interpretation of Hesiod’s jar.