Hermes
Hermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion, and his story begins in a cave on Mount Cyllene, in the dead of night, where Zeus secretly made love to Maia. On the very first day of his life, the rapidly maturing infant crawled away to Thessaly and stole cattle from his half-brother Apollo. By nightfall, he had also invented the lyre from a tortoise shell. That is who Hermes is: thief, inventor, herald of the gods, guide of the dead, patron of merchants, and divine trickster, all before his first sunrise. What draws scholars, psychologists, and worshippers across thousands of years back to this particular god? And how does a pile of roadside stones become one of the most recognizable figures in Western civilization?
The earliest written form of his name, Ἑρμᾶhας, appears in Mycenaean Greek inscriptions using the Linear B syllabic script, placing his worship firmly in the Bronze Age. Most scholars link the name to the Greek word herma, meaning a heap of stones. Each traveler passing a wayside pile would add a stone to it, and over time, that anonymous communal act of marking the road became associated with a deity. Whether the name is truly Greek is contested. R. S. P. Beekes argues for a pre-Greek, non-Indo-European origin, while other scholars have proposed a connection to the Vedic figure Sarama.
The Linear B tablets from Pylos, Thebes, and Knossos record his name alongside several goddesses, including Potnija, Hera, and Hecate. This pattern held for centuries: Hermes was almost always worshipped within sanctuaries dedicated primarily to goddesses. Some researchers speculate that Hermes originated as a form of the pastoral god Pan, himself a reflex of a Proto-Indo-European figure whose root peh2 also gives Latin pastor, shepherd. Under this theory, the epithet gradually displaced Pan's name, and Hermes absorbed the roles of psychopomp, messenger, and god of boundaries, while Pan continued as the god of the wild in the isolated mountains of Arcadia. Later myths, perhaps to reconcile the two, made Pan the son of Hermes.
The caduceus, a staff with two snakes coiled around it, is documented among the Babylonians from around 3500 BC. Two snakes coiled around a staff was also the symbol of the Mesopotamian god Ningishzida, who, like Hermes, served as a mediator between humans and the divine, specifically the goddess Ishtar. Frothingham argued that Hermes himself may have originated as a Mesopotamian snake-god similar or identical to Ningishzida.
In Greek tradition, the caduceus was said to have the power to make people fall asleep or wake up, to bring peace between those in dispute, and to serve as a visible sign of Hermes's authority. It is distinct from the Rod of Asclepius, which bears only one snake and is associated with medicine. The Rod of Asclepius is used by most Western physicians as a badge of their profession, though the two symbols are occasionally confused in modern times. After the Renaissance, the caduceus appeared in heraldic crests and became a symbol of commerce.
His sandals, called pédila in Greek and talaria in Latin, were made of palm and myrtle branches but described as golden, immortal, and able to move with the speed of wind. Originally they had no wings; the winged depiction came later. His weapon was called a harpe; it killed the hundred-eyed giant Argus, and was also lent to Perseus to kill Medusa.
In 415 BC, on the night before the Athenian fleet was to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. The hermai were square or rectangular pillars topped with a bust of a bearded Hermes, first installed across Athens by Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, in the 6th century BC. Each one marked the midway point between a village deme and the central agora. Their destruction on the eve of a major military expedition was taken as a terrible omen.
The Athenians believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or from the anti-war faction within Athens. Socrates's pupil Alcibiades fell under suspicion. One of the charges eventually brought against Socrates himself, which contributed to his execution sixteen years later, was that he had corrupted Alcibiades or failed to steer him away from moral corruption. A single act of religious vandalism thus threaded through the most famous trial in the history of ancient philosophy.
Walter Burkert, reflecting on how a primitive stone cairn could evolve into an Olympian god, remarked plainly: "That a monument of this kind could be transformed into an Olympian god is astounding."
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes describes him as "of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates." The Greek word polytropos, meaning one who turns many ways or has many devices, is used there for Hermes; Homer uses the same word in the opening line of the Odyssey to describe Odysseus, who was, according to the mythographer Apollodorus, a great-grandson of Hermes through Autolycus.
Hesiod adds another dimension in Works and Days: when Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create Pandora, every god gave her a gift, and Hermes's contributions were crafty words and a dubious character. The folkllorist Yeleazar Meletinsky described Hermes as a deified trickster and master of thieves, noting that he was characterized in the Homeric Hymn as "a plunderer, a cattle-raider, a night-watching." Yet the same god was also instructed by Zeus to serve as a teacher to humanity, teaching knowledge and value of justice and improving relations between mortals.
His role as psychopomp, soul guide between the upper and lower worlds, ran alongside the trickster identity from the earliest records. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus killed the suitors of his wife, Hermes led their souls to Hades. The late Jungian psychotherapist López-Pedraza observed that everything Hermes thieves, he later sacrifices to the gods.
Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek culture spread across Egypt, and Greek speakers identified the Egyptian god Thoth with Hermes. The two were worshipped together at the Temple of Thoth in Khemenu, a city that became known in Greek as Hermopolis. A letter from the priest Petosiris to King Nechopso, probably written in Alexandria around 150 BC, states that Hermes is the teacher of all secret wisdoms, accessible through religious ecstasy.
An epithet found in the temple at Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great", was applied to Hermes from at least 172 BC. This gave Hermes the title Hermes Trismegistus, meaning thrice-greatest Hermes. Around the turn of the 1st century AD, certain traditions began interpreting Hermes as a historical mortal who had achieved divine status. Numerous texts on wisdom, astrology, theosophy, and alchemy were attributed to this figure, and as a collection they are known as the Hermetica.
Medieval Christian scholars such as Augustine believed the euhemerised Hermes Trismegistus had been a pagan prophet who predicted the rise of Christianity. Some philosophers argued for a prisca theologia, a single thread of true theology uniting all religions, and used Hermetic writings to support it, claiming that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, or the third great prophet after Enoch and Noah. The 10th-century Suda went further, claiming that the title Trismegistus arose from his praise of the Christian Trinity.
As early as the 4th century BC, Romans had incorporated Hermes into their religion, blending his attributes with those of the Etruscan god Turms under the name Mercury. The Latin name Mercury may derive from merx, meaning merchandise, the root of both merchant and commerce. Mercury became one of the most popular Roman gods, as the numerous shrines and artworks found in Pompeii attest. His temple in Rome stood in the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills, and was built in 495 BC.
The Romans also identified the Germanic god Odin with Mercury. Both carried a staff and wore a wide-brimmed hat. Both were travelers. Both were connected to eloquent speech and to secret knowledge. Both were linked to the dead: Mercury as psychopomp, Odin as lord of the dead in Valhalla. This interpretation may also have been shaped by an earlier association of a Celtic god with Mercury.
A separate syncretism produced Hermanubis, combining Hermes with the Egyptian jackal-headed god Anubis. Both were psychopomps, and that shared function drove their identification as one deity. Hermanubis was depicted with a human body and a jackal head, holding the caduceus. Carl Jung, writing in the 20th century, saw Hermes and Thoth as direct counterparts, and placed Hermes at the center of medieval alchemy as a symbol of what Jung called the process of individuation.
In Boeotia, Hermes was worshipped for saving a town from plague by carrying a ram or calf around the city walls. A yearly festival commemorated this, in which a lamb was carried around the city by the most handsome boy and then sacrificed to purify the city from disease, drought, and famine. Numerous depictions of Hermes as a ram-bearer, known as Hermes kriophoros, have been found across the Mediterranean world.
Researchers have noted that the iconography of Hermes as the Good Shepherd may have influenced early Christianity, specifically the description of Christ as the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John. The Hermaia festival, possibly established in the 6th century BC, restricted participation to young boys and excluded adults entirely, making it among the most initiation-like of all Greek athletic festivals. Several objects found as offerings in Hermes's temples show him as a teenager, consistent with his role as an initiator of young men into adulthood.
Of all three temples specifically dedicated to Hermes during the Classical Greek period, all three stood in Arcadia, the remote mountain region where Pan, his likely precursor, continued to be venerated long after Hermes absorbed his city-facing roles. The connection between Hermes and Arcadia, and by extension with the goat-god Pan, persisted into Hyginus's account, which states that Hermes fathered Pan through the nymph Dryope.
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Common questions
Who is Hermes in Greek mythology?
Hermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion, considered the herald and messenger of the gods. He is the protector of heralds, travelers, thieves, merchants, and orators, and serves as a psychopomp, guiding souls of the deceased to the afterlife. He is regarded as the divine trickster and is often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia.
What is the caduceus and why is it associated with Hermes?
The caduceus is a staff with two snakes coiled around it, sometimes crowned with wings, and it is the main symbol of Hermes. It was said to have the power to make people fall asleep or wake up, to bring peace between litigants, and to serve as a sign of Hermes's authority. The caduceus is documented among the Babylonians from around 3500 BC and was also a symbol of the Mesopotamian god Ningishzida.
What happened to the Athenian hermai in 415 BC?
On the night before the Athenian fleet set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, all of the Athenian hermai were vandalized. The Athenians believed it was the work of saboteurs from Syracuse or from the anti-war faction in Athens. Socrates's pupil Alcibiades fell under suspicion, and one of the charges later brought against Socrates, contributing to his execution sixteen years later, was that he had corrupted Alcibiades.
What is Hermes Trismegistus and where does the title come from?
Hermes Trismegistus, meaning thrice-greatest Hermes, is a title that arose from the syncretism of Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth. An epithet from the temple at Esna, Thoth the great, the great, the great, was applied to Hermes from at least 172 BC. The figure of Hermes Trismegistus became a major component of Hermeticism, alchemy, and related esoteric traditions.
How is Hermes related to the Roman god Mercury?
Romans adopted Hermes into their religion as early as the 4th century BC, combining his attributes with those of the Etruscan god Turms under the name Mercury. The Latin name Mercury is likely derived from merx, meaning merchandise, the root of the words merchant and commerce. Mercury became one of the most popular Roman gods, with his temple in Rome built in 495 BC at the Circus Maximus.
What connection does Hermes have to the Christian image of the Good Shepherd?
Hermes was worshipped in Boeotia as Hermes kriophoros, the ram-bearer, depicted carrying a lamb on his shoulders. Researchers have noted that this iconography may have influenced early Christianity, specifically the description of Christ as the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John. Numerous depictions of Hermes as a ram-bearer have been found throughout the Mediterranean world.
All sources
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