Hesiod describes Pandora as a punishment for humanity in Works and Days.
Works and Days is an ancient Greek didactic poem traditionally attributed to Hesiod, who probably lived around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. In its account, Zeus orders the gods to create Pandora after Prometheus has taken fire and given it to humans. The poem presents her arrival as part of a divine punishment and connects her opening of a vessel with the spread of suffering.
Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, but Works and Days provides the fuller narrative sequence and names the figures involved in creating her. The poem is not simply a mythological story collection; it also addresses farming, justice, labor, and relations between humans and gods.
Readers sometimes attribute the Pandora story generally to “Greek mythology” without distinguishing its ancient sources. Hesiod is the key surviving literary source, while later writers and translators reshaped details, including the common English expression “Pandora’s box.”