Hermes Trivia
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50 free Hermes trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hermes trivia for mythology lovers, Percy Jackson readers and anyone who has ever wondered why a florist's logo has winged shoes. The quiz starts with the newborn who crawled out of a cave on Mount Cyllene, stole his half-brother Apollo's cattle by nightfall and invented the lyre from a tortoise shell, then follows the Homeric Hymn's 'god of many shifts' through his roles as herald, trickster, patron of thieves and merchants, and psychopomp leading souls to Hades. The middle rounds cover his kit and his cult: the caduceus and how it differs from the Rod of Asclepius, the petasos and talaria, the harpe he lent Perseus, the phallic herms that marked Athenian boundaries and were vandalised the night before the Sicilian expedition, the three temples of Arcadia, and the Hermaia games. Later questions take in his myths with Argus, Io, Odysseus, Circe, Priam and Pandora, his children Pan, Autolycus and Hermaphroditus, and his afterlives as Roman Mercury, Egyptian Thoth, thrice-great Hermes Trismegistus, and the reason Wednesday is 'mercredi' in French. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our Greek mythology, Zeus and Roman mythology quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hermes is best known as the herald and what of the gods?
messenger
His winged sandals let him move freely between the mortal and divine worlds and down to the underworld.
Q 02Hermes is the son of Zeus and which of the Pleiades?
Maia
The eldest of the seven sisters, daughters of Atlas; Zeus visited her secretly in a cave on Mount Cyllene.
Q 03According to some myths, Hermes was born on which mountain in Arcadia?
Mount Cyllene
His epithet Cyllenian recalls it; the nymphs washed the newborn in the three springs of the Tricrena mountains nearby.
Q 04On his first day, the infant Hermes crawled off to Thessaly and stole what from Apollo?
his cattle
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes tells the story; the two eventually swapped the herd for a new instrument.
Q 05The infant Hermes invented the lyre from what?
a tortoise shell
Apollo accepted the lyre in exchange for his stolen cattle, and it became one of Apollo's own emblems.
Q 06The Homeric Hymn calls Hermes 'polytropos', a word later applied to which descendant in the Odyssey's first line?
Odysseus
It means 'of many shifts' or 'much wandering'; Hermes was Odysseus's great-grandfather through the thief Autolycus.
Q 07Hermes' role as guide of souls to the afterlife makes him a what?
psychopomp
His image was commonly carved on gravestones in classical Greece, and he led the souls of Penelope's slain suitors to Hades.
Q 08Hermes' main symbol, a winged staff entwined with two snakes, is called what?
the caduceus
It could send people to sleep or wake them, and made peace between litigants.
Q 09Hermes' two-snake staff is often confused with the single-snake staff of which god of medicine?
Asclepius
The Rod of Asclepius is the true medical emblem; the US Army Medical Corps adopted the caduceus in 1902 at one officer's insistence.
Q 10The two-snake staff is documented among which ancient people from about 3500 BC, long before Hermes?
the Babylonians
It was a symbol of the Mesopotamian mediator-god Ningishzida, whom some scholars see as a forerunner of Hermes.
Q 11The wide-brimmed traveller's hat worn by Hermes, later given small wings, is called what?
the petasos
Rural people wore it against the sun; in some images the wings sprout straight from Hermes' hair instead.
Q 12Hermes' winged sandals are known by which Latin name?
talaria
The Greeks called them pédila; they were said to be golden and immortal, made of palm and myrtle, and originally had no wings at all.
Q 13Hermes' curved sword, the harpe, was lent to which hero to kill Medusa?
Perseus
Hermes also gave him the talaria, petasos and helm of darkness for the mission.
Q 21Depictions of Hermes 'kriophoros' show him carrying what on his shoulders?
a ram or lamb
He was said to have saved a Boeotian town from plague by carrying a ram round its walls; the image may have influenced Christ as 'the Good Shepherd'.
Q 22How many temples in Classical Greece, all in Arcadia, are known to have been dedicated to Hermes?
Three
Elsewhere he was worshipped in the sanctuaries of goddesses, and via the herms that stood on every corner.
Q 23The earliest written record of Hermes appears in which Bronze Age script?
Linear B
Tablets from Pylos, Thebes and Knossos render his name as e-ma-a, always alongside goddesses.
Q 14Hermes' epithet Argeïphontes recalls his slaying of Argus Panoptes, a giant with how many eyes?
a hundred
Argus was guarding the heifer-nymph Io for Hera; Hermes charmed him to sleep with the caduceus before killing him.
Q 15After Argus was slain, Hera set his eyes into the tail of which bird?
the peacock
The peacock remained a symbol of Hera ever after.
Q 16Most scholars derive the name Hermes from the Greek 'herma', meaning what?
stone heap
Travellers added a stone to wayside cairns sacred to the god; the linguist Beekes prefers a Pre-Greek origin.
Q 17The Athenian herms, square pillars topped with a bust of Hermes, also featured what beneath?
an erect phallus
Hipparchus set them up in the 6th century BC as midway markers between villages; households kept them by their doors for protection and fertility.
Q 18In 415 BC all the herms of Athens were vandalised on the eve of which military expedition?
the fleet sailing to Syracuse
Alcibiades was suspected, and one charge that later doomed Socrates was failing to steer his pupil away from such corruption.
Q 19In Archaic Greek art Hermes was usually shown how, unlike his later beardless athletic image?
as a mature bearded man
The bearded type lingered on the herms; Praxiteles carved him young, holding the baby Dionysus.
Q 20Praxiteles' Hermes and the Infant Dionysus was discovered in 1877 in the ruins of which sanctuary?
Hera's temple at Olympia
It is displayed at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia and has shaped our idea of Praxitelean style.
Q 24By a widely accepted theory, Hermes originated as a form of which rustic god, later said to be his son?
Pan
Both descend from a Proto-Indo-European pastoral god; Pan kept his own name only in isolated Arcadia.
Q 25Hermes' festival, celebrated with athletics and gymnastics, was called what?
the Hermaia
Participation was restricted to young boys, making it the most initiation-like of the Greek games.
Q 26In Hesiod's Works and Days, what did Hermes give to Pandora?
crafty words and a dubious character
Every god contributed a gift to the woman created to punish humanity for Prometheus's theft of fire.
Q 27In the Odyssey, Hermes tells the hero to chew a magic herb to protect himself from which sorceress?
Circe
He also carried Zeus's order to Calypso to release Odysseus from her island.
Q 28In the Iliad, Hermes escorts which Trojan king safely into the Greek camp to ransom his son's body?
Priam
Hermes was an ally of the Greeks but guided Priam to Achilles' tent and back to Troy with Hector's body.
Q 29Which god did Hermes free from the bronze jar where the giants Otus and Ephialtes held him?
Ares
The twin Aloadae giants had held the war god captive for thirteen months.
Q 30Hermes' son with Aphrodite, later merged with the nymph Salmacis into one being, was named what?
Hermaphroditus
Ovid tells how Salmacis prayed never to be parted from the beautiful boy and got her wish.