Pandora is the woman whose jar releases evils into the world in Hesiod’s *Works and Days*.
Hesiod’s Greek poem, composed around the seventh century BCE, gives the earliest surviving literary version of the story. Zeus has Pandora fashioned as part of his punishment of humanity after Prometheus steals fire. The gods give her various attributes, and Hermes brings her to Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother.
Hesiod does not call the container a box in the modern sense. He uses the Greek word *pithos*, a large storage jar. Pandora opens it, and destructive conditions escape, while Hope remains inside. Later translations and retellings popularized the phrase “Pandora’s box,” which is now more familiar than “Pandora’s jar.”