In Hesiod’s account of Pandora, Hermes gave her a deceptive or misleading character.
Hesiod’s Works and Days describes a sequence in which different gods contribute qualities to Pandora. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, gives her a mind associated with shamelessness and a lying or deceptive nature. He also gives her speech and names her Pandora in the myth’s divine assembly.
This episode is part of Hesiod’s strongly patriarchal and cautionary presentation of women. The poem uses Pandora’s arrival to explain the burdens placed on human beings, including labor, disease, and other hardships. Modern readers often separate the myth’s literary assumptions from contemporary views of gender and recognize that the text reflects archaic Greek social attitudes.
Popular retellings sometimes assign all of Pandora’s traits to Zeus or describe her merely as curious. Hesiod’s narrative is more specific: the gods collectively construct her identity, and Hermes is associated with the deceptive element.