In Hesiod’s Theogony, what was Pandora called when she was introduced to the gods?

In Hesiod’s Theogony, Pandora was called “a beautiful evil.”

The phrase appears in the poem’s description of Zeus’s plan after Prometheus’s theft of fire. Hesiod presents Pandora as an attractive but harmful creation, combining outward beauty with consequences that bring misery to humanity. This language is stark and reflects the poem’s ancient viewpoint about the origin of human suffering.

The expression is not the same as the later idea that Pandora herself was a goddess. In Hesiod, she is a divinely made woman who is sent into the human world. Her beauty is part of Zeus’s strategy, while the harmful result comes through the jar and the troubles released from it.

Theogony and Works and Days offer related but not identical versions of the story. Theogony uses the compact description “beautiful evil,” whereas Works and Days gives more detail about Pandora’s making, gifts, marriage, and jar. Together they form the earliest surviving literary foundation of the Pandora tradition.