In Hesiod’s Theogony, Hermes gave Pandora a deceptive character.
Hesiod’s description of Pandora’s creation assigns different contributions to different gods. Hermes gives her a deceptive mind and character, along with speech in the passage’s broader account. This detail helps explain why Pandora’s presentation is not simply a story about beauty or craftsmanship: the gods deliberately make her an instrument of Zeus’s punishment.
Hermes is the Greek god of messengers, travel, trade, boundaries, and trickery. His traditional connection with cunning and persuasive communication makes his role in Pandora’s creation thematically appropriate. The Theogony’s wording is terse, and translations vary in how they render the relevant Greek terms, but the attribution to Hermes is consistent in standard summaries. Readers sometimes assign Pandora’s deceptive qualities to Aphrodite because she supplies beauty and desire; Hesiod separates those divine contributions.