The offices of Hermes were many, and supposed to be useful, nor was his many sided character thought bad when judged by the moral code of a people who made him a god after their own likeness. Crafty, dishonest merchants did not mean to impeach his honesty when they implored him to give them such shrewdness as to outwit and supplant others in the bargains they made. Rogues and thieves prayed to him, just as bandits and robbers in the same country and in parts of Italy ask the patron saints to aid their assaults on defenseless travelers, and give them a rich booty. Arcadian shepherds invoked Hermes as the guardian of flocks while he inspired their pastoral songs and directed in the manufacture of the rustic instruments on which they played. Moreover, he was regarded and often spoken of as the fleet messenger and dextrous agent of his father, Zeus. In this character the epic poets most frequently present him. Swifter than the wind he passes over the land and sea to execute whatever commissions are intrusted to him. Once he destroyed the hundred eyed Argus, the guardian of Io, on which account he is called by Homer the Argus slayer. Seemans suggests that Argus in that myth represents the starry heavens, and the suggestion is plausible—Argus is slain by the rain god; that is, the stars are hid by the thick clouds. As represented in art, he bears the herald’s staff, or wand, given him by Apollo, by the means of which he can induce sleep or rouse the slumberer; but it was supposed to be used chiefly in guiding souls to their abodes in the under world. The earliest Greeks, as indeed men of all nations, and in every state of society, civilized, semi-civilized or savage, cherished the expectation of a state after death, and though vaguely hoping for happiness hereafter, they also felt the need of an escort, though unseen, to that “land of deepest shade unpierced by human thought.” The belief in Hermes as psychopompus,[9] or conductor of the soul, doubtless gave the dying mythologist when consciously loosing his hold on things visible and tangible, some crumbs of comfort. With no other rod or staff on which to lean, a heathen poet could say: “_Non ego omnis moriar._”[10] Such was at least the longing for immortality in the darkest ages.