Messenger of the gods; god of travel, commerce, communication, borders, eloquence, diplomacy, thieves, and games. He was also the guide of dead souls.
The son of Zeus and the nymph Maia. The second-youngest Olympian, just older than Dionysus.
His symbols include the caduceus (staff entwined with two snakes), winged sandals and cap, stork, and tortoise (whose shell he used to invent the lyre).
Kriophoros Hermes (which takes the lamb), late-Roman copy of Greek original from the 5th century BC. Barracco Museum, Rome
Hermes (/ˈhɜːrmiːz/; Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Hermes is considered the herald of the gods. He is also considered the protector of human heralds, travellers, thieves, merchants, and orators.[5]He is able to move quickly and freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine, aided by his winged sandals. Hermes plays the role of the psychopomp or "soul guide"—a conductor of souls into the afterlife.
In myth, Hermes functioned as the emissary and messenger of the gods, and was often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. He is regarded as "the divine trickster," about which the Homeric Hymn to Hermes offers the most well-known account.
His attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster, the tortoise, satchel or pouch, talaria (winged sandals), and winged helmet or simple petasos, as well as the palm tree, goat, the number four, several kinds of fish, and incense. However, his main symbol is the caduceus, a winged staff intertwined with two snakes copulating and carvings of the other gods. His attributes had previously influenced the earlier Etruscan god Turms, a name borrowed from the Greek "herma".
In Roman mythology, Hermes was known as Mercury, a name derived from the Latin merx, meaning "merchandise," and the origin of the words "merchant" and "commerce
