Cyllene
The highest mountain in the Peloponnese, birthplace of Hermes, where the god fashioned the first lyre.
The Story of Cyllene
On the summit of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, Maia — daughter of the Titan Atlas — gave birth to Hermes in a deep cave. The infant god was precocious from his first hours: he crawled from his cradle, found a tortoise, and killed it, stretching strings across its shell to make the first lyre. He then slipped away to steal Apollo's cattle, driving them backward to confuse the tracks, and hid them in a cave. When Apollo discovered the theft, Hermes charmed him completely by playing the lyre, and Apollo — so enchanted — accepted the instrument in exchange for the cattle and the golden caduceus staff.
Children
{Hermes (born here)}
Symbols
Fun Fact
The tortoise Hermes killed to make the first lyre gave the instrument its Greek name "chelys" — the word for tortoise — which survived in European music theory for centuries.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Birth of Hermes
💭 conceptNarrative
The precocious god who invented the lyre and stole Apollo's cattle on the very day he was born
Mount Ida
🏛 placeBirthplace cave of Zeus
Mount Ida was the highest peak in Crete, home to the cave where the infant Zeus was hidden from his father Kronos and raised in secret by nymphs and the Kouretes.
Oeta
🏛 placegeography
The Thessalian mountain where Heracles built his own funeral pyre and was consumed by fire, ascending to Olympus.
Pieria
🏛 placeSacred geography
The region at the foot of Mount Olympus sacred to the Muses, who were sometimes called the Pierides
Pelion
🏛 placeGeography
A forested mountain in Thessaly, home of the centaur Chiron and the site where the Argo was built
Diktaean Cave
🏛 placegeography
A sacred cave on Crete's Mount Dikte where Zeus was hidden as an infant to protect him from Cronus.
Olympus
🏛 placeHome of the gods
The highest mountain in Greece and the mythological home of the twelve Olympian gods. Olympus was imagined as a paradise above the clouds.
Arcadia
🏛 placePastoral paradise of Pan
Arcadia was both a real mountainous region in the central Peloponnese and an idealised landscape of pastoral innocence, forever associated with Pan, nymphs, and rustic simplicity.
Aetna
🏛 placevolcano, Sicily
The great volcano of Sicily, beneath which Zeus imprisoned the monster Typhon and where Hephaestus kept his forge.
Crete
🏛 placeIsland of the Minotaur and Minoan civilisation
Crete was the largest Greek island and the seat of the Minoan civilisation, home to King Minos, the labyrinth, and the bull-cult that produced some of mythology's most famous stories.
Mount Ida
🏛 placeMountain above Troy where gods watched the war
Mount Ida near Troy was the mountain from which the gods observed the Trojan War and where Paris judged the beauty contest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.
Caucasus Mountains
🏛 placegeography
The mountain range at the edge of the known world where Prometheus was chained as punishment for stealing fire.