In Hesiod’s account, Zeus directed Hermes to teach Pandora deceptive behavior. The instruction is part of Zeus’s plan to punish Prometheus and humanity after Prometheus’s theft of fire.
Pandora’s creation involves several gods, but Zeus controls the larger design. He orders Hephaestus to fashion her, has the gods provide gifts, and sends her to Epimetheus. Hermes’s contribution includes speech and a deceitful disposition, making Pandora an attractive but dangerous gift in the poem’s moral framework.
Modern retellings sometimes portray Pandora as independently curious or as a tragic victim without emphasizing Zeus’s intention. Hesiod’s version is more explicitly punitive: the arrival of woman, marriage, labor, and suffering is connected to Zeus’s response to Prometheus. The myth’s gender assumptions reflect the social world of archaic Greek poetry rather than modern ideas about responsibility or equality.