Zeus sent Pandora to Epimetheus as part of his punishment for Prometheus’s theft.
In Hesiod’s narrative, Prometheus deceives Zeus and later steals fire for humanity. Zeus responds by ordering the gods to create Pandora, a woman whose arrival brings a new burden to humans. Pandora is then presented to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, despite Prometheus’s advice to reject gifts from Zeus.
Zeus is the ruler of the Olympian gods in this story, and his action explains why Pandora’s arrival is not merely a domestic episode. It belongs to a sequence of punishments: Prometheus suffers a separate punishment, while humanity receives Pandora and the troubles released from her vessel. Later retellings sometimes make Pandora the sole cause of evil, but Hesiod’s framework places responsibility within Zeus’s larger response to Prometheus.