Hermes is the winged herald and messenger of the Olympian gods. In addition, he is also a divine trickster, and the god of roads, flocks, commerce, and thieves. A precocious newborn, he invented the lyre and stole Apollo’s cattle on the very first day of his life. Hermes was the only Olympian capable of crossing the border between the living and the dead.

Most scholars think that Hermes’ name derives from the Greek word herma, which means “a heap of stones” or “cairn.” Cairns were a common sight in the Ancient world, serving as trail- or boundary-markers. Some say that the first cairn was erected by the gods, when they cast all their stones in favor of Hermes, during his trial for slaying Argus Panoptes.

Archaic artists portrayed Hermes as a mature bearded man. However, later on, he was represented as an athletically built nude youth, immediately recognizable by four attributes: a broad-brimmed hat (petasos), winged sandals (talaria), a purse, and a herald’s wand (kerykeion, or caduceus in Latin). Hermes’ wand – a short-winged staff, entangled by two identical serpents – had magical powers, bringing sleep upon people or rousing them from it. It is very similar and frequently confused with the Rod of Asclepius, which is why Hermes’ wand is often incorrectly used as a symbol of medicine.