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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG |
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HERMES , a Greek god, identified by the Romans with Mercury. The derivation of his name and his primitive character are very uncertain. The earliest centres of his cult were Arcadia, where Mt. Cyllene was reputed to be his birthplace, the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace, in which he was associated with the Cabeiri and Attica. In Arcadia he was specially worshipped as the god of fertility, and his images were ithyphallic, as also were the " Hermae
pastoral
pastoral
' Note the prestige of martyrs and confessors, the ways of true and false prophets in Mand. xi., and the different types of evil and good " walk " among Christians, e.g. in Vis. iii. 5-7 ; Mand. viii. ; Sim. viii. Iliad (xiv. 490) and the later epic hymn to Hermes; and his Homeric titles aK&K71ra, Eptouvtos, &rrwp Mwv, probably refer to him as the giver of fertility. In the Odyssey, however, he appears mainly as the messenger of the gods, and the conductor of the dead to Hades. Hence in later times he is often represented in art and mythology as a herald. The conductor of souls was naturally a chthonian god; at Athens there was a festival in honour of Hermes and the souls of the dead, and Aeschylus (Persae, 628) invokes Hermes, with Earth and Hades, in summoning a spirit from the underworld. The function
HERMAE
cairn
gift of Hermes, and any stroke of good luck was attributed to him; but it may be doubted whether his patronage of luck in general was developed from his function
lore
special
young
minor gifts of prophecy as delegated by Apollo, who alone knew the mind of Zeus. Only a single oracle is recorded for Hermes, in the market-place of Pharae in Achaea, and here the procedure was akin to popular divination. An altar, furnished with lamps, was placed before the statue; the inquirer, after lighting the lamps and offering incense, placed a coin in the right hand of the god; he then whispered his question into the ear of the statue, and, stopping his own ears, left the market place. The first sound which he heard outside was an omen. 'From the foregoing account it will be seen that it is difficult to derive the many-sided character of Hermes from a single elemental conception. The various theories which identified him with the sun, the moon or the dawn, may be dismissed, as they do not rest on evidence to which value would now be attached. The Arcadian or " Pelasgic " Hermes may have been an earth-deity, as his connexion with fertility suggests; but his symbol at Cyllene 2 We only hear of a Hermes Saws at Pellene (Paus. vii. 27. I) and of the custom of allowing promiscuous thieving during the festival of Hermes at Samos (Plut. Quaest. Graec. 55). rather points to a mere personification of reproductive powers. According to Plutarch the ancients " set Hermes by the side of Aphrodite," i.e. the male,and female principles of generation; and the two deities were worshipped together in Argos and else-where. But this phallic character does not explain other aspects of Hermes, as the messenger-god, the master-thief or the ideal Greek ephebe. It is impossible to adopt the view that the Homeric poets turned the rude shepherd-god of Arcadia into a messenger, in order to provide him with a place in the Olympian circle. To their Achaean audience Hermes must have been more than a phallic god. It is more probable that the Olympian Hermes represents the fusion of several distinct deities. Some scholars hold that the various functions of Hermes may have originated from the idea of good luck which is so closely bound up with his character. As a pastoral god he would give luck to the flocks and herds; when worshipped by townspeople, he would give luck to the merchant, the orator, the traveller and the athlete. But though the notion of luck plays an important part in early thought, it seems improbable that the primitive Greeks would have personified a mere abstraction. Another theory, which has much to commend it, has been advanced by Roscher, who sees in Hermes a wind-god. His strongest arguments are that the wind would easily develop into the messenger of the gods (Au oupos), and that it was often thought to promote fertility in crops and cattle. Thus the two aspects of Hermes which seem most discordant are referred to a single origin. The Homeric epithet 'Apyeidbvriis, which the Greeks interpreted as " the slayer of Argus," inventing a myth to account for Argus, is explained as originally an epithet of the wind (apye rr? s), which dears away the mists (apybs, 4aivw). The uncertainty of the wind might well suggest the trickery of a thief, and its whistling might contain the germ from which a god of music should be developed. But many of Roscher's arguments are forced, and his method of interpretation is not altogether sound. For example, the last argument would equally apply to Apollo, and would lead to the improbable conclusion that Apollo was a wind-god. It must, in fact, be remembered that men make their gods after their own likeness; and, whatever his origin, Hermes in particular was endowed with many of the qualities and habits of the Greek race. If he was evolved from the wind, his character had become so anthropomorphic that the Greeks had practically lost the knowledge of his primitive significance; nor did Greek cult ever associate him with the wind. The oldest form under which Hermes was represented was that of the Hermae mentioned above. Alcamenes, the rival or pupil of Pheidias, was the sculptor of a herm at Athens, a copy of which, dating from Roman times, was discovered at Pergamum in 1903. But side by side with the Hermae there grew up a more anthropomorphic conception of the god. In archaic art he was portrayed as a full-grown and bearded man, clothed in a long chiton, and often wearing a cap (Kuvi) or a broad-brimmed hat (9rErauoc), and winged boots. Sometimes he was represented in his pastoral character, as when he bears a sheep on his shoulders; at other times he appears as the messenger or herald of the gods with the K71pVKZov, or herald's staff, which is his most frequent attribute. From the latter part of the 5th century his art-type was changed in conformity with the general development of Greek sculpture. He now became a nude and beardless youth, the type of the young
Praxiteles
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