Things you never knew and probably never wanted to know about Autolycos:
A less well known personage in Greek mythology is Autolycos, who appeared to the Greeks the very father of dishonesty.. (Note: His name is from "autos + lukos", hence "the wolf himself, a very wolf". The Romans called a "woman for hire" a "lupa" or she-wolf. We use the word "shark" for an unscrupulous money-dealer, but all these terms connect money-matters with a voracious animal known for its sharp teeth.. and here I thought that was a Weasel.) His father, not un-incidentally, was Hermes the God of Trade, and his daughter was Anticleia, arch-trader Odysseus' mother. On the earlier and also the later side of his pedigree Autolycos' family is characterized by swindling and duplicity, the very things which made his name (in)famous in the Homeric world (as Homer sees it at Iliad X 267 and Od. XIX 295).
Like Gyges he was said to have had the power of making himself invisible, but he could also make invisible and unrecognizable the things which he had stolen. Since his father Hermes, the standard god of business and commerce, is also somewhat tricky and not a little dishonest, Autolycos may be suspected of having an inherited commercial trait in his thievery.
Autolycos' son in law Odysseus continues the mercantile motif and is distrusted not only in the Homeric epics, but in later times, when he was admitted to be clever, but somewhat of a scoundrel.
Yup, a long line of thieving buggers.
