In the standard Pandora myth, Zeus ordered the gods to create Pandora.
Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, devised Pandora as punishment for Prometheus’s theft of fire. Hesiod’s Works and Days presents the creation as part of Zeus’s response to the Titan’s act of helping humanity. Hephaestus shaped Pandora from earth, and other gods supplied her with gifts and attributes.
The plan demonstrates Zeus’s authority over the other gods in the story. Pandora is sent to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, after Prometheus has warned him not to accept gifts from Zeus. The resulting chain of events explains the mythic origin of suffering among humans.
Modern retellings sometimes portray Pandora as independently discovering the container or as an accidental figure. Hesiod’s account is more deliberate: Zeus commands the creation and sends Pandora as part of a divine strategy. Poseidon and Hades are major gods, but neither is the planner of Pandora’s creation in the canonical Hesiodic narrative.