Meet Iris

Mar 16, 2016

The personification of the rainbow and a messenger to the gods, Iris is also considered a goddess of the sea and sky. As a messenger, Iris acts as a conduit between divine and mortal beings and travels on the rainbow with great speed to every corner of the world, as well as into the sea and underworld. She is often portrayed with a winged staff, much like the messenger god Hermes, and in art is commonly seen as a rainbow or as a lovely young woman with wings on her shoulders. Iris is the daughter of the sea god Thaumas and nymph Electra and sister to the Harpies. She is married to Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, and some sources name Pothos as their son.

While the Greeks believed that Iris served all Olympians as a messenger, it was not until the Roman period that she gained her close affiliation with the goddess Juno (or Hera). In fact, in Virgil’s Aeneid, the famous epic describing the Trojan prince Aeneas’ founding of Rome, Iris is dispatched by Juno to pluck a lock of hair from the Carthaginian queen Dido, spelling the woman’s fate. Later Iris was sent to stir up the Trojan women who were traveling in Aeneas’ party. Once riled, the women set fire to four of Aeneas’ ships, greatly hindering the company’s ability to depart from the island of Sicily.

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