In Hesiod’s Works and Days, who received Pandora as Zeus’s gift?

In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Epimetheus received Pandora as Zeus’s gift. He accepted her despite his brother Prometheus’s warning to reject gifts from Zeus.

The episode follows Prometheus’s theft of fire, which Zeus treats as an offense against the divine order. Pandora is therefore not simply a curious woman in the earliest account; her arrival is part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity and of Prometheus.

Epimetheus’s name is often explained as “afterthought,” contrasting with Prometheus, whose name is associated with forethought. The naming reinforces the story’s moral structure: Epimetheus acts first and understands the consequences later.

Once Pandora is in the household, she opens the container and releases the evils previously absent from human life. The myth’s sequence makes Epimetheus the recipient of Zeus’s gift, even though Pandora becomes the central figure in later retellings.