Works and Days presents Pandora’s creation as part of Zeus’s punishment for Prometheus’s theft of fire.
In Hesiod’s poem, Prometheus tricks Zeus over the division of a sacrificial animal and later steals fire for humans. Zeus responds by ordering the creation of Pandora, who is sent to Epimetheus with a container of troubles. Her arrival explains why humans experience labor, disease, and other hardships.
Theogony also contains a related account and mentions the creation of woman, but Works and Days provides the more developed narrative connecting Prometheus, Pandora, and the origins of human suffering. The poem combines mythology with advice about farming, justice, work, and social conduct.
This distinction helps separate the two Hesiodic works. Both matter for the myth, but Works and Days is the poem most directly associated with the complete Pandora episode and its moral framework.