Which Hesiod work tells the Pandora story as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity?

Hesiod’s Works and Days tells the Pandora story as part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity. The poem presents Pandora’s creation after Prometheus steals fire and gives it to humans.

Works and Days is a didactic Greek poem concerned with farming, justice, labor, and proper conduct. Its Pandora episode is not an isolated fairy tale: it forms part of an explanation for why human life includes suffering and difficult work. Zeus has Hephaestus create Pandora, and the gods contribute qualities before she is sent to Epimetheus.

Hesiod also discusses Pandora in the Theogony, but the two poems handle the material differently. The Theogony provides a briefer account within a genealogy of the gods, while Works and Days gives the fuller narrative and links it to the human condition. That difference makes the poem’s title an important identifying fact.