 For the Greeks, Pluto ("Ploutōn", Πλούτων), the ruler of the dead and the consort of Persephone, became conflated with Plutus ("Ploutos", Πλοῦτος), wealth personified; Plato points out the meaningful ambiguity of this etymological play in his dialogue "Cratylus".Hermes is a god of boundaries, travel, and liminality, and thus conveys souls across the border that separates the living from the dead, acting as a psychopomp, but he was also a god of exchange, commerce, and profit.The name of his Roman counterpart Mercury was thought in antiquity to share its derivation with the Latin word "merces", "goods, merchandise."