Iris (means 'Helene' in English) was the goddess of the rainbow, the messenger of the Olympian gods. She was often represented as the handmaiden and personal messenger of Hera. Iris was a goddess of sea and sky--her father Thaumas
(the wondrous) was a marine-god, and her mother Elektra "the amber" 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. Her name contains a double meaning, being connected both with iris, "the rainbow," and eiris, "messenger."
As the sun unites Earth and heaven, Iris links the gods to humanity. She travels with the speed of wind from one end of the world to the
other and into the depths of the sea and the underworld.
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By command of Zeus, the king of the gods, she carries a ewer of water from the Styx, with which she puts to sleep all who perjure themselves. Goddess of sea and sky, she is also represented as supplying the clouds with the water needed to deluge the world, consistent with her rainbow identity.
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