Iris

Iris was the goddess of the rainbow and the messenger of the Olympian gods.

Residence: Mount Olympus
Symbols: Rainbow and caduceus
Parents: Thaumas and Electra
Siblings: Arke, Aello, Celaeno and Ocypete
Roman equivalent: Iris

She was often described as the handmaiden and personal messenger of Hera. Iris was a goddess of sea and sky; her father, Thaumas, was a marine-god, and her mother, Electra, a cloud-nymph. For the coastal-dwelling Greeks, the rainbow’s arc was most often seen spanning the distance between cloud and sea, and so the goddess was believed to replenish the rain-clouds with water from the sea. Iris had no distinctive mythology of her own. In myth she appears only as an errand-running messenger and was usually described as a virgin goddess.

Back to The Other Olympian Gods