In Greek mythology, Pandora (from Greek: , "giver of all, all-endowed") was the first woman. Each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mould her out of Earth (Γαîα -Gaia) as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, and all the gods joined in offering this "beautiful evil" seductive gifts. Her other name, inscribed against her figure on a white-ground kylix in the British Museum (illustration, right), is Anesidora, "she who sends up gifts." According to the myth, pandora opened a jar (pithos) in modern accounts referred to as "Pandora's box", releasing all the evils of mankind— greed, vanity, slander, envy, pining— leaving only Hope inside once she had closed it again.

The myth of Pandora is very old, appears in several distinct Greek versions, and has been interpreted in many ways. In all literary versions, however, the myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world. In the seventh century BC Hesiod, both in his Theogony (briefly, without naming Pandora outright, line 570) and in Works and Days, gives the earliest literary version of the Pandora story. There is an older mention of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon Mankind in Homer:

The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Zeus' palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Zeus the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Zeus sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.

The myth according to Hesiod: the Theogony

The Pandora myth first appears in lines 560-612 of Hesiod's (ca. 8th-7th centuries BC) epic poem, the Theogony, without ever giving the woman a name. After humans have received the gift of fire from Prometheus, an angry Zeus decides to give men a punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mould from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the race of men. After Hephaestus does so, Athena dressed her in a silvery gown, an embroidered veil, garlands and an ornate crown of gold. This woman goes unnamed in the Theogony, but is presumably Pandora, whose myth Hesiod revisited in Works and Days. When she first appears before gods and mortals, "wonder seized them" as they looked upon her. But she was "sheer guile, not to be withstood by men." Hesiod elaborates (590-93):