IRIS

The daughter of Thaumas and of Electra, and a sister of the Harpies. She is the personification of the rainbow which unites heaven and earth. As a virgin goddess, swift as the breeze and with wings of gold, she is the messenger of the gods, especially of Zeus and Hera, and, according to later writers, exclusively of the latter. She bears their behests from the ends of the earth even to the river Styx, and into the depths of the sea. As a messenger of the gods she resembles Hermes, and therefore carries the herald's staff of that divinity.