Hermes

Messenger of Zeus, patron of travellers and tricksters, *psychopompos* who leads souls to Hades. The *Homeric Hymn to Hermes* tells how, on the day of his birth in the cave of Mount Cyllene, he stepped out of swaddling cloth to steal Apollo's cattle, drove them backwards to mask the trail, invented the lyre from a tortoise-shell, and talked his way out of theft by offering it to Apollo. Son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia.

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