In a culture like pre-modern Europe where literacy can be something of a rare commodity, it can be important for people who can’t read to be able to recognize their gods in art and religious artifacts so they don’t accidentally sacrifice to the wrong deity and offend someone. Since you can’t just put a label on the bust or fresco or whatever, representations of gods have to be clear in who they’re depicting. As a result, gods end up with certain bits of iconography associated with them so you can always tell who you’re looking at. Hermes is a prime example of this and actually has some of the coolest iconography of all the gods.

As Theoi.com explains, perhaps the most distinctive piece of gear Hermes could be found holding is his magical traveler’s wand, known as a kerykeion in Greek and a caduceus in Latin. He is also typically dressed as a traveler, in a knee-length tunic covered with the short cloak known as a chlamys and wearing a broad-brimmed hat called a petasus. Of course, he is perhaps best known for his winged sandals or boots that allow him to fly so quickly to deliver the gods’ messages. His wand and hat are also commonly depicted as having wings. An animal associated with Hermes that he is often depicted with in art is, somewhat ironically for the fleet-footed god, the tortoise.

As the World History Encyclopedia explains, at only half a day old, the baby Hermes was already making trouble. Having snuck out of his mother’s cave, Hermes makes his way to Pieria, where he finds and subsequently steals 50 of his half-brother Apollo’s sacred cattle. To cover his tracks, Hermes makes the cows walk backwards and fashions shoes out of wood brush to sweep away his own footprints. Eventually, the young Hermes hides the cattle (minus two that he sacrificed, during which process he invented the idea of starting a fire by rubbing sticks together) in a small grotto, but after a while Apollo manages to track his cows down and, thanks to a shepherd who snitched, is able to figure out that Hermes stole them. And despite Hermes’ best “but I’m just a widdle baby” routine, Apollo still brings the matter to trial before their father, Zeus.

Fortunately, earlier in the day, the baby Hermes had also come across a tortoise, which he thought was hilarious (this story is possibly why the god is associated with this particular animal). He also thought it was hilarious when he scooped all its guts out and used its shell to invent the lyre, basically the instrument of the ancient Greeks. Hermes gave the lyre to Apollo, the god of music, who gladly accepted and let Hermes keep the cattle, parting as friends.

One of the most recognizable attributes of Hermes is his staff, known as the caduceus. As Classical Wisdom explains, this staff, wand, or rod was known by the Greeks as the kerykeion, or herald’s wand, and appears in artistic depictions of Hermes as early as the sixth century BCE. In the earliest depictions, this simple rod or branch was often entwined with ribbons or garlands, but in time these became interpreted as snakes, perhaps due to the ancients’ associations between snakes and divine power, or else because of the slithering serpents’ apparent speed. At any rate, the staff–to which many myths attribute the magical ability to cause or remove sleep–became a symbol of peace due to its association with the god of messengers and diplomats.

In the modern era, however, Hermes’ caduceus is most often seen as a symbol of the medical profession, appearing as it does on the symbol for the U.S. Medical Corps, many pharmacies, and other medical services. This, however, is due to a confusion between Hermes’ wand and the Rod of Asclepius, the god of healing, which has a single snake entwined around it. This is obviously a pretty easy mistake to make–one snake vs. two snakes–but there is some irony in the fact that the medical industry accidentally adopted as its symbol the sign of the god of thieves and commerce.

Another one of Hermes’ primary roles in mythology is as a helper to the great heroes of legend, a job he sometimes performs in tandem with his half-sister Athena, who is also renowned as a patron of heroes. As Theoi.com explains, probably his most famous help to a hero comes in “The Odyssey” when he helps his great-grandson Odysseus avoid being transformed into a pig by the witch Circe as his crew all had been by directing him to the holy herb known as moly. In addition to that, Hermes (often accompanied by Athena) helped the young hero Perseus in his quest to kill the Gorgon Medusa by either giving or directing him toward magical items to aid him in his quest, including his own flying sandals, an unbreakable scimitar, a bag of holding, and a hat belonging to Hades that made him invisible.

Hermes likewise helped Heracles in his final labor to fetch Cerberus, the hound of Hell, from the house of Hades by guiding him and protecting him from harmful spirits. During the Trojan War, Hermes gave advice and protection to the Trojan king Priam as he navigates the Greek camps to retrieve the body of his son Hector from Achilles, even though Hermes himself supported the Greeks in the war, in character with Homer’s depiction of the messenger god as “Hermes the kindly.”

Aesop, the famous writer of fables, would often use Hermes as a character in his brief moralistic tales, perhaps because his role as a pastoral god of travelers suited the frequently rural settings of many of his stories. Theoi.com collects these fables in one place, including what is perhaps the most famous one, which tells of a woodcutter who accidentally drops his ax in a river. As he sits there crying at his own foolishness, Hermes appears and tells him that he will help him out. Hermes dives into the river and comes back up with an ax made of gold. The man denies that the golden ax is his, so Hermes dives again and this time comes back with a silver ax. The man likewise says that this treasure doesn’t belong to him, so Hermes goes under for a third time and comes back with the woodcutter’s own ax. As a reward for his honesty, Hermes gives the man all three axes. When one of the woodcutter’s friends hears the story, he intentionally throws his ax in the water and tries to claim the golden ax for himself when Hermes presents it. For his greed and dishonesty, Hermes leaves without even fetching this man’s actual ax.

Other stories see Hermes assigned to distribute intelligence to humankind and a pinch of deceit to all craftsmen and merchants.