In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Hermes gives Pandora the power of speech. Hesiod describes Pandora as a woman assembled through the contributions of several Olympian gods after Zeus ordered her creation.
Athena clothes her, the Graces and Seasons adorn her, and Aphrodite gives her attractiveness. Hermes then contributes a mind associated with cunning and a voice, while also giving her the name Pandora. These details distinguish Hesiod’s account from later simplified retellings, which often mention only a sealed container and the escaping evils.
Hermes is the messenger god, so his role in giving speech fits his connection with language and communication. The passage does not present Pandora as an independent goddess; she is a constructed human woman whose gifts form part of Zeus’s punishment of humanity after Prometheus stole fire.
Later artists and writers freely altered the story, but Hermes remains the answer in the earliest surviving literary narrative.