- Looks after
- Messenger of the gods; travellers, trade and thieves
- Roman name
- Mercury
- Often shown with
- The winged sandals, the caduceus or kerykeion, the traveller's hat.
Hermes
Ἑρμῆς
Hermes is the messenger god, quick and clever, the guide of travellers and of the dead, and a patron of trade and thieves.
Hermes was the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, born in a cave on Mount Cyllene. According to the Homeric Hymn, on the day he was born he made a lyre from a tortoise shell and stole the cattle of Apollo, which he had to give back. Apollo took the lyre in exchange, and both gods ended on good terms.
As the divine messenger, he carries the commands of Zeus on winged sandals, with a herald's staff (kerykeion). He is also the guide of souls, psychopompos, who leads the dead to the underworld. He helped Perseus against Medusa and Odysseus against Circe, and he fetched Persephone from Hades.
In daily life, boundary stones and road markers in the form of a pillar with a head, called herms, were set up everywhere in Greece to protect travellers. He is also the patron of merchants, athletes (a god of the gymnasium), and thieves.
In later art and language
The planet Mercury and the metal mercury are named after the Roman form. The word hermetic, meaning sealed, comes from Hermes Trismegistus, a later Greek-Egyptian figure identified with Hermes.
Ancient sources
- Homeric Hymn 4 to Hermes
- Homer, Odyssey 5, 10, 24
- Hesiod, Theogony 938-939