Pandora is the woman whose jar releases human troubles in Hesiod’s Greek myth.
Her story appears most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days, composed in archaic Greece. Zeus orders the gods to create Pandora as part of his punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire. Different gods contribute gifts, and Hermes gives her a deceptive mind and speech.
Hesiod calls Pandora the first woman, presenting her arrival as a source of hardship for men. The familiar English expression “Pandora’s box” is slightly different from the ancient story: Hesiod describes a large storage jar, or pithos, rather than a small box.
The myth is also linked with Hesiod’s Theogony, which describes the creation of woman and the troubles associated with her arrival without telling the complete jar episode. Pandora is therefore both a mythological character and the source of a lasting modern metaphor for an action that unleashes many unforeseen problems.