50 Fun Facts About Hermes

Hermes is best known as the herald and what of the gods?

Messenger duty was shared: in the Iliad it is mostly Iris who carries Zeus's orders, while Hermes does the job in the Odyssey, where she never appears.

Which of Zeus's lovers was the mother of Hermes?

Maia, eldest of the seven Pleiades, shunned the company of the gods and lived in a deep cave, so Zeus could visit her at dead of night while Hera slept.

According to some myths, Hermes was born on which mountain in Arcadia?

Mount Cyllene gave him the title Cyllenian; three springs nearby were held sacred because the mountain nymphs were said to have washed the newborn god in them.

Before his first day was over, the infant Hermes slipped from his cradle and stole what from Apollo?

His cattle vanished without a trail: in the Homeric Hymn, the newborn drove fifty cows backwards so that their hoofprints pointed the wrong way.

The infant Hermes invented the lyre from what?

A tortoise shell became the soundbox: in the Homeric Hymn the newborn god scooped out the animal, stretched oxhide over it and fitted seven strings of sheep gut.

The Homeric Hymn calls Hermes 'polytropos', 'of many turns', a word that also describes which hero in his epic's opening line?

Odysseus is the 'man of many turns' in the first line of the Odyssey, which leaves him unnamed there; by most accounts he was also Hermes's great-grandson.

Hermes' role as guide of souls to the afterlife makes him a what?

Psychopomp is Greek for 'soul guide'; the last book of the Odyssey shows Hermes leading the suitors' ghosts down to the underworld, squeaking like bats.

Hermes' main symbol, a winged staff entwined with two snakes, is called what?

The caduceus began as a plain herald's staff, the Greek kerykeion; in Homer, Hermes uses his wand to lull mortals to sleep or wake them at will.

Hermes' two-snake staff is often confused with the single-snake staff of which god of medicine?

The Rod of Asclepius is medicine's true emblem; the mix-up spread after the US Army Medical Corps put Hermes's two-snake staff on its uniforms in 1902.

Through his mother, Hermes was a grandson of which Titan?

Atlas was the father of Hermes's mother; Zeus had condemned him to carry the heavens on his shoulders after the Titans lost their war with the gods.

The wide-brimmed traveller's hat worn by Hermes, later given small wings, is called what?

The petasos was the ordinary sun hat of Greek farmers and travellers, which is why the god of the road wears one; the pair of small wings was added in later art.

Which Latin name for Hermes' winged sandals comes from the word for 'ankle'?

Talaria means 'of the ankles'; Homer gives Hermes golden sandals that carry him over sea and land as fast as the wind, and never mentions wings.

Hermes' curved sword, the harpe, was lent to which hero to kill Medusa?

Perseus needed more than the blade: in Apollodorus, Hermes and Athena guide him on his way to the nymphs who keep the winged sandals and the cap of invisibility.

Hermes' epithet Argeïphontes, traditionally 'slayer of Argus', recalls the giant who guarded which lover of Zeus, turned into a heifer?

Io was the heifer Argus had to watch; in Ovid, Hermes lulls the giant to sleep with pipe music and a long story before striking.

After Hermes slew Argus, Hera immortalised her watchman in the plumage of which bird?

The peacock wears Argus's eyes: in Ovid, Hera gathers them from her dead watchman and sets them like jewels in the tail of her bird.

A long-standing theory derives the name Hermes from the Greek 'herma', meaning what?

Stone heap, or cairn: travellers added a stone to wayside piles sacred to the god, though some linguists now reject the link and call his name pre-Greek.

The Athenian herms, square pillars topped with a bust of Hermes, also featured what beneath?

An erect phallus was thought to bring luck and ward off harm, which is why Athenians set these pillars at their doorways and at crossroads.

In 415 BC most of Athens's herms were vandalised overnight, on the eve of which military expedition?

The fleet sailing to Syracuse soon lost a commander over the scandal: Alcibiades was accused, recalled for trial, and fled to Sparta instead.

In Archaic Greek art Hermes was usually shown how, unlike the athletic youth of later sculpture?

As a mature bearded man he never quite vanished: the herms kept the old bearded head even after sculptors had turned Hermes into a beardless young athlete.

The marble Hermes credited to Praxiteles, holding an infant god, was unearthed in 1877 in which sanctuary's ruins?

Hera's temple at Olympia is where the traveller Pausanias had seen the statue some 1,700 years earlier; a thick layer of clay kept it in fine condition.

Depictions of Hermes 'kriophoros' show him carrying what on his shoulders?

A ram or lamb recalls the tale that Hermes saved Tanagra from plague by carrying a ram round its walls; each year the handsomest youth repeated the circuit with a lamb.

Zeus had Hermes deliver Pandora as a bride to which Titan's son, who ignored a warning never to accept the god's gifts?

Epimetheus had been told by his brother to send back anything Zeus offered; he took Pandora in, and understood only once her jar of evils was open.

The earliest written record of Hermes appears in which Bronze Age script?

Linear B was cracked in 1952 by Michael Ventris, an architect and self-taught linguist; tablets from Pylos, Thebes and Knossos turned out to name Hermes.

One scholarly theory holds that Hermes began as an aspect of which god, later called his son?

Pan and Hermes are traced by this theory to one prehistoric herdsman god: Hermes began as that god's title, while Pan kept the old name in remote Arcadia.

Statues of Hermes and Heracles traditionally watched over which place in a Greek city?

The gymnasium made Hermes a patron of young athletes: his own festival, the Hermaia, was a day of contests held there, often shared with Heracles.

In Hesiod's Works and Days, what did Hermes give to Pandora?

Crafty words and a dubious character came with a voice: in Hesiod, Hermes also gives the first woman the power of speech and names her Pandora.

In the Odyssey, Hermes gives the hero a magic herb to protect him from the potions of which sorceress?

Circe had already turned his scouting party into pigs; the herb, moly, black at the root with a milk-white flower, kept her potion from working on him.

In the Iliad, Hermes escorts which Trojan through the Greek camp by night to ransom Hector's body?

Priam got past the sentries because Hermes put them all to sleep, even though the god had sided with the Greeks in the war.

Which god did Hermes free from the bronze jar where the giants Otus and Ephialtes held him?

Ares had lain bound in the jar for thirteen months and was close to death when the giants' stepmother tipped off Hermes, who stole him out.

In Ovid, Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is fused into one body with which nymph?

Salmacis clung to the boy as he swam in her pool and prayed that they would never be parted; the gods answered by merging the two into one.

Which master thief, said to be Hermes's son, lent his name to the pickpocket in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale?

Autolycus could make whatever he stole unrecognisable, a skill he owed to Hermes; Shakespeare's rogue of that name boasts of being 'littered under Mercury'.

Hermes carried which newborn god out of Hera's reach, first to Ino and Athamas and then to the nymphs of Nysa?

Dionysus was first raised as a girl by Ino and Athamas to fool Hera; when she drove them mad, Zeus turned the child into a kid and Hermes took him to Nysa.

The Roman name Mercury is usually linked to the Latin 'merx', meaning what?

Merchandise suits the god of traders: on his feast day, 15 May, Roman merchants sprinkled their goods with water from his sacred spring.

In Virgil's epic, Jupiter sends Mercury to order which hero to leave Queen Dido and sail for Italy?

Aeneas had settled in Carthage as Dido's lover until Mercury reminded him of his destiny; he sailed, and the abandoned queen killed herself.

The Romans identified Mercury with which Germanic god, as preserved in 'Wednesday'?

Odin, as Woden, gave his name to Wednesday when Germanic speakers translated the Roman 'day of Mercury', which French still keeps as mercredi.

In which Botticelli painting does Mercury stand at the far left, reaching up to touch the clouds with his staff?

Primavera closes with Mercury at its edge: he turns his back on Venus and the three dancing Graces and lifts his staff to the last wisps of cloud.

Which Egyptian god did Ptolemaic Greeks identify with Hermes, worshipped at Hermopolis?

Thoth was the ibis-headed scribe of the gods, so the merged Hermes took on writing and secret wisdom, and Thoth's city Khemenu became Hermopolis, 'city of Hermes'.

The title Trismegistus, given to the god in his Egyptian-Greek form, means what?

Thrice-greatest Hermes was credited by alchemists with inventing the airtight glass seal, which is why 'hermetically sealed' still carries his name.

Which Egyptian god, a fellow guide of the dead, was fused with Hermes in Roman-era Egypt?

Anubis and Hermes became Hermanubis; Plutarch explains the double name as a god who belongs partly to the heavens and partly to the lower world.

Which fifth-century BC historian, writing about Egypt, treats an Egyptian god as the local form of Hermes?

Herodotus calls an Egyptian shrine 'the temple of Hermes' and goes further, claiming that the names of nearly all the Greek gods came from Egypt.

Renaissance scholars revered Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan sage who lived at the same time as which biblical figure?

Moses's supposed contemporary was honoured accordingly: in 1488 Hermes Trismegistus was set into the marble floor of Siena Cathedral, at the entrance to the nave.

In one account, Hermes stole back Zeus's severed sinews from which monster, letting the king of the gods fight on?

Typhon had cut the sinews from Zeus's hands and feet and hidden them in a cave under a dragon's guard; Hermes and Aegipan stole them and fitted them back.

In a Homeric Hymn, Zeus sends Hermes down to the underworld to bring back whom?

Persephone came back, but only for part of each year: she had been given a pomegranate seed to eat in the underworld, and tasting it bound her to return.

In the war against the Giants, Hermes fought unseen by wearing a helmet that belonged to which god?

Hades owned a cap that made its wearer invisible; wearing it, Hermes killed the giant Hippolytus without ever being seen.

In one myth, which flower sprang from the blood of Crocus, a youth Hermes accidentally killed with a discus?

Saffron is the crocus, the flower that bears the youth's name; a rival version has Crocus turned into it over his love for the nymph Smilax.

Which hero opens Aeschylus's Libation Bearers by praying to Hermes at his father's tomb, before avenging him?

Orestes asks Hermes of the underworld to be his ally, then gets into the palace disguised as a traveller bringing news of his own death.

According to Apollodorus, which three goddesses did Hermes lead to Paris for a beauty contest?

Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each offered Paris a bribe; he chose Aphrodite's, the hand of Helen, and the Trojan War followed.

In which Aesop fable does Hermes test a man with gold that is not his?

The Honest Woodcutter loses his axe in a river; Hermes dives in and offers him a golden one and a silver one, and gives him all three when he refuses both.

In the Percy Jackson novels, which son of Hermes turns on the gods and becomes the host of the Titan Kronos?

Luke Castellan resents Hermes for leaving him and his mother to fend for themselves, so he lets Kronos use his body; in the end he turns on the Titan and dies a hero.

Which maxim paraphrases the Emerald Tablet, a short text credited to Hermes Trismegistus and prized by alchemists?

As above, so below condenses the tablet's second verse; Isaac Newton made his own English translation, which begins ''Tis true without lying'.