Hermes, a la Shmoop.
That's Mercury for you and me.
Oh, heyyyy. Forgot the shoot was today.
Anyway, I'm Hermes, herald of Zeus...and, oh...don't mind all these wallets.
There was a sale at...um...Wallet Mart.
OK, whatevs, there wasn't any sale. I totally stole all of these. Hey, I'm the god of thieves.
What do you want from me?
I figure if people aren't smart enough to hold onto their stuff,
then they don't deserve to keep it.
Stealing's just.. kinda in my blood, ya know?
I've been thieving since I was a kid. I stole Apollo's sacred cattle when I was a toddler.
It was so funny because I walked the cattle backward,
making it mega-hard for Apollo to track us down.
Apollo was so steamed when he finally found us.
I managed to chill him out, though, by
playing him the lyre <>, which I'd found the time to invent that day--
because I'm just that amazing.
I traded the lyre for the sacred cattle, and Apollo and I were cool.
The best thing is that, ever since, I've had all the sacred hamburgers I can eat.
You can't blame me for stealing once in a while. I need a hobby.
My main job as a messenger of the gods is super stressful.
My dad, Zeus, is a pretty good boss, but he's majorly demanding.
At least he gave me these winged sandals to speed things up.
Sometimes the messages I bring are super important--like back during the Trojan War.
Though some messages were... more important than others.
Zeus had me help out some of his favorite heroes back in the day as well--like when
I leant Perseus my sandals to help him slay that hag, Medusa.
Between you and me, I kind of regret it, though. Perseus has some funky feet--just sayin'.
I also helped out Odysseus <>
when he was dealing with Circe <>, the sea witch.
I gave him a potion so that she couldn't turn him into a pig like the rest of his men.
Sometimes Zeus makes me do his dirty work, though, like the time he called a hit on
Argus Panoptes <> and made me do the deed.
See... Zeus had been fooling around with a nymph named Io, and when he heard his wife
Hera coming, he changed Io into a white cow.
So Hera would think he was just... milkin' her... or making out with a cow, or somethin'?
Hera didn't really buy it and put her guy, Argus, in charge of watching over the cow.
Argus was a giant covered in eyes, so you couldn't really find a better watchman.
His optometrist bill must've been through the roof...
Anyway, Zeus wasn't about to let his wife get the better of him, so he sent me in to
liberate his favorite heifer. I lulled the big guy to sleep with my trusty lyre.
And then...well... I killed him in his sleep. Brutal? Yeah. But I was just following orders.
Argus was seriously unhappy about the way he went out, let me tell you. I got an earful
all the way down to the Land of the Dead.
Oh, I forgot to tell you. I'm also a psychopomp.
Ha, no, not a psychopath.
A psychopomp's job is to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld.
Yeah, I do that on top of everything else. I'm a busy fella.
So, come on guys. Is it really a big deal if I steal a few things every now and then
just as a way to relieve stress? Everybody needs a hobby, right?
That's it for today, folks.
And by the way...that thing you've been missing, I swear I didn't take it...