Hermes Trivia
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50 free Hermes trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hermes trivia for mythology lovers, Percy Jackson readers and anyone who has ever wondered why a florist's logo has winged shoes. The quiz starts with the newborn who crawled out of a cave on Mount Cyllene, stole his half-brother Apollo's cattle by nightfall and invented the lyre from a tortoise shell, then follows the Homeric Hymn's 'god of many shifts' through his roles as herald, trickster, patron of thieves and merchants, and psychopomp leading souls to Hades. The middle rounds cover his kit and his cult: the caduceus and how it differs from the Rod of Asclepius, the petasos and talaria, the harpe he lent Perseus, the phallic herms that marked Athenian boundaries and were vandalised the night before the Sicilian expedition, the three temples of Arcadia, and the Hermaia games. Later questions take in his myths with Argus, Io, Odysseus, Circe, Priam and Pandora, his children Pan, Autolycus and Hermaphroditus, and his afterlives as Roman Mercury, Egyptian Thoth, thrice-great Hermes Trismegistus, and the reason Wednesday is 'mercredi' in French. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Greek mythology, Zeus and Roman mythology quizzes.
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Q 01Hermes is best known as the herald and what of the gods?
messenger
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.
Q 02Which of Zeus's lovers was the mother of Hermes?
Maia
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.
Q 03According to some myths, Hermes was born on which mountain in Arcadia?
Mount Cyllene
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.
Q 04Before his first day was over, the infant Hermes slipped from his cradle and stole what from Apollo?
his cattle
His cattle vanished without a trail: in the Homeric Hymn, the newborn drove fifty cows backwards so that their hoofprints pointed the wrong way.
Q 05The infant Hermes invented the lyre from what?
a tortoise shell
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.
Q 06The Homeric Hymn calls Hermes 'polytropos', 'of many turns', a word that also describes which hero in his epic's opening line?
Odysseus
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.
Q 07Hermes' role as guide of souls to the afterlife makes him a what?
psychopomp
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.
Q 08Hermes' main symbol, a winged staff entwined with two snakes, is called what?
the caduceus
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.
Q 09Hermes' two-snake staff is often confused with the single-snake staff of which god of medicine?
Asclepius
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.
Q 10Through his mother, Hermes was a grandson of which Titan?
Atlas
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.
Q 11The wide-brimmed traveller's hat worn by Hermes, later given small wings, is called what?
the petasos
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.
Q 12Which Latin name for Hermes' winged sandals comes from the word for 'ankle'?
talaria
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.
Q 13Hermes' curved sword, the harpe, was lent to which hero to kill Medusa?
Perseus
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.
Q 21Depictions of Hermes 'kriophoros' show him carrying what on his shoulders?
a ram or lamb
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.
Q 22Zeus had Hermes deliver Pandora as a bride to which Titan's son, who ignored a warning never to accept the god's gifts?
Epimetheus
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.
Q 23The earliest written record of Hermes appears in which Bronze Age script?
Linear B
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.
Q 14Hermes' epithet Argeïphontes, traditionally 'slayer of Argus', recalls the giant who guarded which lover of Zeus, turned into a heifer?
Io
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.
Q 15After Hermes slew Argus, Hera immortalised her watchman in the plumage of which bird?
the peacock
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.
Q 16A long-standing theory derives the name Hermes from the Greek 'herma', meaning what?
stone heap
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.
Q 17The Athenian herms, square pillars topped with a bust of Hermes, also featured what beneath?
an erect phallus
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.
Q 18In 415 BC most of Athens's herms were vandalised overnight, on the eve of which military expedition?
the fleet sailing to Syracuse
The fleet sailing to Syracuse soon lost a commander over the scandal: Alcibiades was accused, recalled for trial, and fled to Sparta instead.
Q 19In Archaic Greek art Hermes was usually shown how, unlike the athletic youth of later sculpture?
as a mature bearded man
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.
Q 20The marble Hermes credited to Praxiteles, holding an infant god, was unearthed in 1877 in which sanctuary's ruins?
Hera's temple at Olympia
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.
Q 24One scholarly theory holds that Hermes began as an aspect of which god, later called his son?
Pan
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.
Q 25Statues of Hermes and Heracles traditionally watched over which place in a Greek city?
The gymnasium
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.
Q 26In Hesiod's Works and Days, what did Hermes give to Pandora?
crafty words and a dubious character
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.
Q 27In the Odyssey, Hermes gives the hero a magic herb to protect him from the potions of which sorceress?
Circe
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.
Q 28In the Iliad, Hermes escorts which Trojan through the Greek camp by night to ransom Hector's body?
Priam
Priam got past the sentries because Hermes put them all to sleep, even though the god had sided with the Greeks in the war.
Q 29Which god did Hermes free from the bronze jar where the giants Otus and Ephialtes held him?
Ares
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.
Q 30In Ovid, Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is fused into one body with which nymph?
Salmacis
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.