What catastrophe prompted Zeus to create Pandora in Hesiod’s myth?

Prometheus stealing fire prompted Zeus to create Pandora in Hesiod’s myth. The story presents Pandora as part of Zeus’s retaliation after Prometheus secretly gave fire to humanity.

In Works and Days, Prometheus’s act is connected with the unequal division of a sacrificial ox and with the loss of divine advantage. Zeus responds by hiding fire, but Prometheus restores it to humans. Zeus then devises a further punishment: the gods create a beautiful woman whose arrival brings suffering to humankind.

The myth is not identical to every later account of Prometheus. Aeschylus, for example, presents Prometheus in a more sympathetic and dramatically developed way in Prometheus Bound, though the play’s authorship and date have been debated. Pandora’s story in Hesiod specifically links her creation to the conflict over fire, not to the Trojan War, the Giants, or Persephone.