Hermes
The Greek messenger god, herald of Zeus and guide of the dead to the underworld. Greek artists give him a broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, winged sandals and a herald’s staff, the kerykeion, which the Romans called the caduceus.
Meaning
Hermes (HUR-meez, as Dictionary.com respells it) is the herald and messenger of the gods and the god of roads, trade, cunning and theft. The Romans called him Mercury. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes him on an Athenian oil flask of about 480 to 470 BC dressed for travel in a short cloak and a petasos, a broad-brimmed hat, with winged sandals and a herald’s staff ending in two entwined snakes, “the same symbol” that real Greek heralds carried from city to city. On the Parthenon’s east frieze he sits with his petasos resting on his knees, the Acropolis Museum notes. That staff is the caduceus, kerykeion in Greek, which has its own page for the way it came to stand for medicine. Hellenic polytheists, a small modern revival in Greece and the United States, worship the twelve Olympians, Hermes among them, Religion News Service reported in 2017.
Origin and history
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes tells his first day. Born to Maia in a cave on Mount Cyllene, he climbed out of his cradle, found a tortoise at the door and made its shell into the first lyre with seven strings of sheep-gut: “it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a singer”. That evening he stole fifty of Apollo’s cattle, reversing their hoofprints to confuse the trail and wearing sandals he wove from tamarisk and myrtle. When Apollo caught him, the lyre bought his peace, and Apollo gave him “a splendid staff of riches and wealth: it is of gold, with three branches”. Zeus made him the only messenger to Hades. Apollodorus has the same story with a twist: Apollo gave the golden wand in exchange for a shepherd’s pipe, and Zeus made Hermes herald to himself and to the gods of the underworld.
In the Odyssey he binds on “his lovely golden sandals, that wax not old”, which carry him over sea and land as fast as the wind, and takes the wand with which he closes men’s eyes in sleep or wakes them. At the start of the last book he uses the same golden wand to lead the souls of the dead suitors down to the underworld, and they follow him gibbering like bats in a cave. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter it is Hermes who drives Persephone back up from the dead to her mother.
Winged sandals
The sandals in the Odyssey are golden and immortal and carry him across the sea, but the passage gives them no wings, and the sandals of the Hymn to Hermes are brushwood. The wings are the painters’ addition, firmly in place by the time of the Met’s oil flask; Dictionary.com’s entry now says he travelled “aided by the wings he wore on his sandals and his cap”. Perseus borrows a pair to fly to the Gorgons: Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles puts winged sandals on his feet, and in Apollodorus they come from nymphs and go back to Hermes when the task is done.
Herms
Hermes was also a pillar. Thucydides describes the stone Hermae of Athens as “the customary square figures so common in the doorways of private houses and temples”, and tells how in a single night most of them had their faces mutilated. Pausanias saw a marble statue by Praxiteles at Olympia of Hermes carrying the infant Dionysus.
Hermes and Hestia
The twenty-ninth Homeric Hymn calls on Hestia and Hermes together, “bearer of the golden rod”, and asks the two to come and live in the house in friendship.
Read next
- Next in Greek gods and their symbolsDionysusThe Greek god of wine and of the theatre, son of Zeus and Semele, daughter of Cadmus. Greek art shows him crowned with ivy, holding a two-handled wine cup and the thyrsus, his ivy-wreathed staff, often with satyrs and maenads around him.
- The caduceus is Hermes’s herald’s staff, the kerykeionCaduceusA staff with two snakes twined around it and a pair of wings at the top. It is the wand of Hermes, messenger of the Greek gods, and the staff heralds carried; since 1902 it has been the medical insignia of the US Army, and it is widely used for medicine in the United States.
See also
Hestia, Anubis, Thoth, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon.
Sources
- Hermes (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, “Hermes” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary and The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy), Dictionary.com, entry and pronunciation
- Lekythos attributed to the Tithonos Painter, 25.78.2 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Terracotta lekythos attributed to the Tithonos Painter, Attic, ca. 480–470 BC, accession 25.78.2, catalogue entry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue description
- Greek Gods and Religious Practices (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Department of Greek and Roman Art, “Greek Gods and Religious Practices”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, essay text
- Parthenon, east frieze, block IV (Acropolis Museum), Acropolis Museum, “Parthenon. East frieze. Block 4 (IV). Replica”, collection entry, Acropolis Museum, description of the block
- Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Homeric Hymn IV, To Hermes; Homeric Hymn II, To Demeter; Homeric Hymn XXIX, To Hestia; Shield of Heracles, ll. 216–237; Homeric Hymn IV, To Hermes, ll. 20–38
- The Odyssey of Homer (tr. Butcher and Lang), Homer, The Odyssey, translated by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang (1879), Project Gutenberg eBook #1728, Project Gutenberg, Book V; Book XXIV
- Apollodorus, Library 3.10.2 (tr. J. G. Frazer), Apollodorus, The Library, translated by Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), 3.10.2, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Apollod. 3.10.2; Apollod. 3.10.2 (the lyre and the cattle)
- Apollodorus, Library 2.4.2 (tr. J. G. Frazer), Apollodorus, The Library, translated by Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), 2.4.2, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Apollod. 2.4.2
- Apollodorus, Library 2.4.3 (tr. J. G. Frazer), Apollodorus, The Library, translated by Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), 2.4.3, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Apollod. 2.4.3
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.27 (tr. Richard Crawley), Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6.27.1, translated by Richard Crawley (J. M. Dent, 1910), Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Thuc. 6.27.1
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.17.3 (tr. W. H. S. Jones), Pausanias, Description of Greece, translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod (Loeb, 1918), 5.17.3, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Paus. 5.17.3
- Spiritual seekers reconstruct ancient Greek polytheism (Religion News Service, 7 March 2017), Religion News Service, “Spiritual seekers reconstruct ancient Greek polytheism”, 7 March 2017, Religion News Service, article text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 8, 2026. How we research
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