In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Prometheus stole fire for humans before Zeus sent Pandora. Prometheus is a Titan associated with intelligence, craft, and foresight, and his theft of fire became one of Greek mythology’s defining acts of defiance.
Zeus had withheld fire from mortals, but Prometheus concealed it in a fennel stalk and carried it to humanity in later versions of the story. Zeus punished Prometheus and devised Pandora as a separate punishment for humans who benefited from the theft.
The Pandora story and the Prometheus story are therefore connected, but they are not identical. A common mistake is to say Pandora opened the container because Prometheus did so; in the traditional narrative, Pandora is sent to Epimetheus, while Prometheus is the fire-bringer who anticipated Zeus’s anger.