In Hesiod’s version of the Pandora myth, Pandora opens the container that releases evils into the world. The episode appears most fully in Works and Days, where Pandora is created by the gods and sent to humanity as part of Zeus’s punishment.
The container is commonly called Pandora’s box, but Hesiod’s Greek word is pithos, meaning a large storage jar. Pandora lifts its lid, allowing destructive forces and hardships to escape. She then closes it before the final thing inside can leave; that remaining item is traditionally translated as hope, though the exact interpretation of elpis is debated.
Pandora’s action is often described as deliberate curiosity, especially in later retellings. Hesiod’s account itself emphasizes the opening and its consequences rather than presenting the familiar modern moral in exactly those words.
The myth has also accumulated details from later art, literature, and popular culture. Thus, “box,” “curiosity,” and the precise nature of hope belong partly to the tradition’s later development, while Pandora’s opening of the jar is central to Hesiod’s narrative.