Hermes

The cattle walked backward. Fifty of them, driven out of the meadows of Pieria with their hooves turned to point the wrong way, so that anyone reading the tracks would follow them in the exact opposite direction. The thief who arranged this was less than a day old. He had been born that morning in a cave on Mount Cyllene, and already he had climbed out of his cradle, found a tortoise on the threshold, and set to work.

Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, a retiring nymph who kept to a deep Arcadian cave and wanted nothing to do with the quarrels of Olympus. Her son had other plans. The tortoise by the door did not survive the encounter. He scooped out the shell, stretched reed, oxhide, and gut across it, and made the first lyre, plucking a few bright notes to test the sound before boredom sent him looking for something larger. What he found was his half-brother Apollo’s herd.

By evening he had hidden the cattle, sacrificed two of them, brushed away his tracks, and slipped back into his cradle to play the helpless newborn. It did not hold. Apollo, god of prophecy, worked out who the culprit was and dragged the infant before Zeus. Hermes lied beautifully, swore he did not even know what a cow was, and made his father laugh. Then he took up the lyre and played. The music undid Apollo’s anger where the theft had kindled it; he wanted the instrument more than he wanted his herd. The two struck a bargain, the lyre for the cattle, and with it a lasting peace between them. Apollo handed the newcomer a golden staff and a place among the gods. Hermes had talked his way onto Olympus before he could walk.

That first day is the whole god in miniature. He belongs to thresholds and crossings, to the space between one place and another, and he is never more himself than when he is moving. His winged sandals, the talaria, carry him between the mortal world, the halls of the gods, and the kingdom of the dead. No other Olympian passes so easily through that last door. When a soul leaves the body it is Hermes who comes for it, walking the shade down the grey road to the cold banks of the Styx and the ferryman waiting there. The Greeks called him Psychopompos, the guide of souls, and the office suited him. He was the god you met at the edge of things.

He carried the marks of a herald wherever he went: the broad-brimmed traveler’s hat, the winged cap and winged feet, the golden wand wound with two serpents that later ages named the caduceus. Sculptors gave him a young man’s body, lean and quick, bearded in the older images and clean-shaven in the later ones. On the open road his presence took a rougher form. Travelers marked their routes with herms, square stone pillars topped with his head and set with a carved phallus, planted at boundaries and crossroads as protection and as a plain notice of where one district ended and the next began.

His usefulness to the other gods was endless, because he could go where they could not and say what they needed said. When Zeus wanted his lover Io freed from the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes, it was Hermes he sent. The giant never shut more than a few eyes at a time, so no ordinary escape would work. Hermes came disguised as a herdsman, sat down beside Argus, and talked. He spun long, winding, sleepy stories, played a low drone on his pipes, and let the sound do the work until every one of the hundred eyes had drifted closed. Then he killed him. The name Argeïphontes, slayer of Argus, stayed with him afterward.

He turns up at the hinge of a dozen other stories, always as the one who makes the next thing possible. He gives Perseus the winged sandals and the curved blade to face Medusa. He hands Odysseus the herb moly so Circe’s potions cannot touch him. He leads old Priam through the sleeping Greek camp in darkness to beg Achilles for his son’s body. He escorts three goddesses to a shepherd on Mount Ida for the judgment that lights the fuse of the Trojan War. His own line is scattered and colorful, among them Pan the goat-god, Hermaphroditus, and the master thief Autolycus, who inherited his gift for taking what was not his.

His powers follow from what he is. Speed past any other god, the freedom of every border and every barred road, a genius for persuasion and deceit, safe passage even through death. He is credited with inventing the lyre and the shepherd’s pipe, and by some accounts the alphabet, numbers, and weights. He is the patron of everyone whose living depends on wit, which is why merchants and liars and thieves all pray to the same god.

The limits are the limits of a servant. For all his gifts, Hermes does not rule. He carries messages he did not write and enforces decrees he had no hand in making, bound to the errands of Zeus and the needs of the other Olympians. His cleverness has no weight behind it, no thunderbolt, no sea to raise. When the great powers clash, he is the one sent to smooth things over, not the one who decides how they end. He opens doors for everyone, and rarely walks through one that leads somewhere of his own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Hermes in Greek mythology?

Hermes is the Olympian messenger god, the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia. He is the god of travel, roads, boundaries, commerce, heralds, thieves, and eloquence, and he serves as the swift go-between who carries the will of the gods to mortals and other deities.

What are Hermes’s symbols?

Hermes is known by his winged sandals, called talaria, his broad-brimmed traveler’s hat, and the caduceus, a golden staff twined with two serpents. These marked him as a herald and let him move freely between the world of the living, Olympus, and the underworld.

What is Hermes the god of?

Hermes governs travelers, merchants, orators, athletes, and thieves, along with roads, boundaries, and every kind of threshold or crossing. He is also the psychopomp, the guide who leads the souls of the dead down to the underworld, a role no other Olympian filled so easily.

What did Hermes do on the day he was born?

On his first day of life Hermes climbed from his cradle, killed a tortoise and made the first lyre from its shell, then stole fifty cattle from his half-brother Apollo, driving them backward to confuse the trail. When Apollo caught him, Hermes traded the lyre for the herd and won a place among the gods.

Why is Hermes called the slayer of Argus?

Hermes earned the epithet Argeïphontes, “slayer of Argus,” by killing the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes. Sent by Zeus to free the nymph Io, Hermes lulled all of the giant’s eyes to sleep with long stories and soft pipe music, then killed him.

Related Entries

Apollo, Zeus, Pan, Perseus, Iris, Charon, Persephone, Hades, Athena, Aphrodite, Pleiades, Atlas, Thoth, Anubis, Eshu