What phrase does Hesiod use for Pandora in the Greek Theogony?

In the Theogony, Hesiod describes Pandora as a “beautiful evil.”

The phrase captures the poem’s central idea that Pandora’s attractiveness conceals a destructive purpose. Zeus orders her creation as part of his response to Prometheus, who has stolen fire and given it to humanity. The gods make her appealing, but her arrival brings suffering to mortals.

This wording belongs to the Theogony’s compressed account. The poem does not provide the complete sequence of gifts and the opened vessel found in Works and Days. Later artists and writers blended details from both poems into the familiar Pandora story.

Readers often assume that “beautiful evil” is Pandora’s formal title. It is better understood as Hesiod’s descriptive phrase, presenting her as a personification of a harmful gift rather than simply labeling her as evil in every later interpretation.