In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Pandora opens the container that releases troubles into the world.
Hesiod describes Pandora as the first woman, created by the gods after Prometheus gave fire to humanity. Zeus sends her to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, despite Prometheus’s warning not to accept gifts from Zeus. Pandora receives a sealed container and eventually opens it, allowing diseases, toil, and other hardships to escape.
The Greek story does not originally call the object a box. Hesiod uses the word pithos, meaning a large storage jar. The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” developed later, especially through Renaissance translations. The myth also says that one thing remains inside after the escape: hope, whose precise meaning has been debated by interpreters.
Pandora is therefore the direct answer in the standard version of the myth, rather than Zeus, Epimetheus, or Prometheus.