Miscellaneous Myths: Hermes

Which Greek god do you see as having the greatest influence on your daily life? Wrong, it's Hermes. Hermes, Hermes, Hermes, Hermes. I hope you don't have to deal with that every day, but still, Hermes. Hermes, known to the Romans as Mercury, was the ancient Greek god of roads, travel, merchants, thieves, athletes, deception, and a handful of other related things. He was primarily recognized as a messenger god, but he was also worshiped as a god of the underworld and as a psychopomp who guided the souls of the dead. He also pulled triple duty by guiding dreams and had a hobby of helping mortal heroes when they found themselves in dire situations.

With so many jobs, it's no wonder he's so widespread today! What a millennial icon. So before we get into all the historical context and character development, let's first take a look at where exactly Hermes is found in ancient Greek mythology. Hermes is very young by Olympic standards; only Dionysus is canonically younger. He was born to the Pleiad Maia in the mountains of Arcadia, and is the son of Zeus, like about 7% of ancient Greece. But Hermes distinguishes himself from the other Olympians by literally making fun of him from the moment he was born. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the first thing he does after birth is find a turtle, kill it, and make a lyre from its shell.

Then he gets hungry, so he does the only rational thing and steals 50 of Apollo's sacred cattle. But what if Apollo realizes they're gone? Well, of course, Hermes first turns his hooves around to make it look like they're walking backwards. Sure, guys. Hermes hides the cows and lights a fire so he can sacrifice the meat to the gods, including himself, of course. He then returns home and does a helpless baby act, but his mother doesn't believe it. Instead, Hermes explains that this is all part of her cunning plan to get on the Olympians' radar so she can get them both the respect and honor they deserve instead of living in a cave.

Meanwhile, Apollo finally realizes that his cows are gone and, after some detective work, he locates Hermes in Maia's cave. Apollo questions Hermes, who insists that he is a baby who knows nothing about cows. Apollo takes him to Zeus, who finds this whole situation funny. Zeus orders Hermes to lead Apollo to the cows, and along the way, Hermes wins Apollo over by playing the lyre. Apollo is so delighted that he promises Hermes to become the messenger of the gods and he and his mother will be honored among the Olympians. He trades his shepherd role for Hermes' lyre and the two return to Olympus.

And in exchange for Hermes' promise to never steal from him again, Apollo also gives him his caduceus, a small staff with two snakes wrapped around it, normally seen as a symbol of messengers and heralds, but which is also very specifically a symbol. of Hermes. . Thus, Hermes makes his debut as a deceitful underdog who achieves an improbable victory through trickery and trickery. And despite gaining untold power and fame in the process, he somehow still manages to look like a cunning underdog for centuries to come. Good trick! Hermes appears regularly in mythology, playing a supporting role in both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Although in the Iliad he was allied with the Achaeans for most of the book, he also protected King Priam when he traveled to the Achaean camp to recover the body of his son Hector. And in the Odyssey, Hermes frequently provided aid and advice to Odysseus, even helping him confront Circe to break the spell he placed on his men and then escorting the suitors' dead souls to the afterlife. This extra special divine help may be because Odysseus is actually his great-grandson, the grandson of his son Autolycus, who was a notorious bandit, trickster, and shapeshifter. He runs in the family, I think.

One of Hermes' most famous feats is killing the 100-eyed giant, Argus. In the myth of Io, the nymph Io is turned into a cow for complicated reasons and kept under the care of Argus. Zeus asks Hermes to free her from her, so Hermes disguises himself as a simple shepherd, lulls Argos to sleep with a long, boring story about the origins of panpipes, and then cuts off his head. In memory of this event, Hermes is often called by the epithet "Argeiphontes", which means "Murderer of Argus". Hermes appears a few more times in popular Greek mythology. He often aids wandering heroes such as Perseus and Orestes by giving them the means to sneak invisibly or deceive his enemies.

In fact, these stratagems are an important feature of Hermes. Hermes is the god of liars and thieves, along with all other matters that fall under his jurisdiction. And while these may seem like somewhat unheroic qualities for a god, most Greek heroes were imposters or underdogs in one way or another. Even Heracles, who was the best equipped person in the world to solve all of his problems with brute force, sometimes had to be clever. Like when he tricked Atlas into taking back the sky. So although Odysseus had a bad reputation for always cheating, in practice cheating was a respected heroic trait when used in moderation and that was largely due to the influence of Hermes.

Before we get into the story, there's one more crazy thing we need to know about Hermes that we'll get into later, and it's these things. These were called "herme". They were border posts along the roads. They generally had the head of Hermes, but that varied and they always had a penis. I don't know why the penis is non-negotiable, but yes. Since Hermes is a god of limits, it makes sense that he's on most of these road markings, but at the same time he's still a little strange, and not just because of the penis. So let's not explore that for a moment and get to the story.

First the most important thing. Hermes... used to be Pan. I'll explain. The Greek god Pan is a mysterious figure. Not on purpose, he's just very old so there isn't much information available about the origin or development of him. Pan, as he was characterized in ancient Greece, is generally considered a rustic and wild god. He is officially the god of forests, mountains, fertility, shepherds and flocks, but he also has many other crazy qualities. His cult took place almost exclusively in the mountainous hinterland of Arcadia, which is also the birthplace of Hermes, and Arcadia was known as inland, wooded, and very ancient compared to the rest of Greece.

Pan, as a wild god, was not actually worshiped in buildings. He was worshiped in natural caves and only had two temples built, one of which was in the Peloponnese. In mythology, Pan is older than the Olympians. It is said that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and Apollo his gift of prophecy. He is best known for two things named after him: pan flute and panic. Pan created the syrinx, or pan flute, when a nymph he was chasing turned into reeds to escape. So he turned her into a musical instrument that he could put her lips to... kind of weird.

Now, panic, as we all know, describes a type of fear so intense that it borders on madness. Pan is specifically blamed for being responsible for the panic. He screamed in the forest and everyone who heard him panicked. He could drive away entire armies with it. We know some things about Pan, but a lot about him is very vague. His origins, for example, are incredibly vague and varied, suggesting that he is very old, because that's the kind of myth that takes a while to evaporate. And in fact, Pan is probably older than Mycenaean Greece. Comparative mythology scholars reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European religion that emerged from Vedic, Norse, and Greek mythologies think that Pan is a branch of the Proto-Indo-European shepherd god...

THIS... of which the only other known branch is Pushan, a Vedic shepherd god. The Rigveda, which Pushan mentions, may date back to 1700 BC. So if Pan comes from the same god, it probably predates the Mycenaean era that began in 1600 BC. Due to the lack of written sources, we don't know much about how Pan was characterized before ancient Greece. But Pushan can give us a lot of information through proxy. Pushan is the Vedic deity of travel, paths, journeys, animal husbandry, herding and much more. He is also a psychopomp. Have you noticed that these are all things Hermes is a god of?

So the theory, and this is not my theory, but it is widely accepted today, is that Hermes split from Pan in the Mycenaean era or earlier and that the original Pan before that was very much like Pushan, a liminal god. of navigation between places such as roads. the general desert and the journey to the beyond. When this original Pan was divided, Pan retained his connotations of shepherd and flock, but all roads and journeys went to Hermes, greatly reducing Pan. And it is worth noting that Hermes also has some shepherd associations. This theory is not based solely on the fact that Hermes has general similarities to a Vedic deity.

Pan and Hermes also have other strange connections. First, its origins are in Arcadia, as are its cult centers. And in some versions of mythology, Pan is the son of Hermes. It's a very strange connection, but connecting them backwards makes sense and is surprisingly relevant; Hermes and Pan are mythically famous for the size of their penis. So back to the hermas. The word herme literally means "stacked stones." It's not a name. The name Hermes is not a name. And hermas is a very old concept in that region, older than ancient Greece and older than Hermes. Before statues were carved, paths were marked with piles of stones.

But the lack of human features did not make them any less holy. The hermens were venerated. It was customary to throw another stone on the font or anoint it with oil if one was feeling particularly pious. And manipulating and then disfiguring them was considered a terrible insult. And Pan, as the ancient deity of roads and travel, was probably the god worshiped by the Herms. Remember in the Aphrodite video I talked about divine epithets and how they describe the capacity in which a god was worshiped? We don't really know for sure, but it seems very likely that Pan had some sort of Herme-related epithet in the past that described him as Pan of the Stacked Cairns.

And this epithet was also separated from him in the past by his own deity, Hermes. This all happened very soon, so we don't know exactly why Hermes parted ways with Pan. It could be because Pan was a fairly specialized deity and his cult had difficulty expanding beyond the more rustic wastelands. So they turned him into a new deity with so much mass-market appeal that he's literally still on brand labels. Whatever the original reason, we know that Hermes appears in Linear B Mycenaean inscriptions or at least in a word that sounds like Hermes, and that means that Hermes split from Pan long before we had any kind of proper documentation.

By the time the year 800 arrives and Homer begins writing the epics about him, Hermes is firmly established, as evidenced by his role in the Iliad, and Pan has already been reduced to a simple nature god. Oh, and before we continue, a fun fact about Pan. Some of you who are very familiar with Greek mythological esotericism, or who have simply read the Percy Jackson books, may have heard that Pan is canonically dead. According to a writing by Plutarch around the year 100 AD, a few decades earlier, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, a divine voice called from the island of Paksi to a sailor named Thamus and told him to tell everyone that the great god Pan was dead.

Thamus did so and everyone was somewhat disappointed that Pan was dead. However, Pan didn't really seem to be dead in any meaningful way. His shrines were still visited and his worship was still carried out. What was all that about? Good. This could all be a hilarious misunderstanding. Remember in my old underworld

myths

video I said that Ishtar had a dead friend named Tammuz? And in my Aphrodite video I explained that Tammuz had his own cult that was brought to Greece? In ancient Greek the phrase becomes: "Thamus, the great god Pan is dead!" read as "Thamus Panmegas tethneke".

But something strange happens in Greek. Pan is not only the name of the god, but also a prefix meaning "everything." So this phrase could be: "Thamus, Pan the Great is dead!" or “Tammuz the Great is dead!” So this whole matter of Pan's death could be the result of some sailors overhearing the cult of Tammuz praising his only achievement and believing they heard them tell them that the god called Pan had died. Anyway, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world when I heard it. You can share that crazy anecdote at parties. Back to Hermes!

In the early days of ancient Greece, Hermes was quite similar to Pan. In the archaic era, between 800 and 500 BC. C., Hermes was always represented as an older man with a beard. In classical and Hellenistic Greece the image of him changed until it became the image we recognize today. An athlete, young, beardless and generally naked. Dionysus also underwent such a transformation. Maybe the Romans just didn't like mengreater. Speaking of which, we have to talk about Mercury, the Roman version of Hermes. Most Roman versions of Greek gods started out as full-fledged gods. Mars, for example, the parallel of Ares, was originally an agricultural deity and a god of war and was notably not treated with as much disdain as Ares in his own pantheon.

For the most part, the other Roman gods were also full-fledged deities, although sometimes they got a little confused and accidentally lumped other gods together. Like Pluto, the Roman equivalent of Hades, who accidentally was both the god of the underworld Pluto and the god of wealth Pluto. But Mercury? Mercury did not exist! The name Mercurius has an unclear etymology, but is probably derived from the Latin root for "merchant" or from an older word for "frontier." In any case, the name is a literal description of one of Hermes' divine duties and has no further history. Mercury appears to have absorbed a handful of minor Roman deities, the Dea Lucrii, a collective of minor gods of profit, especially immoral profits coming from evil sources, but in reality Mercury was simply the Roman name for Hermes.

I don't know why they bothered; They didn't come up with a Latin name for Apollo, but it is what it is. In Roman times, Hermes/Mercury was incredibly popular. As Rome was concerned with expansion, Hermes' status as a god of trade and merchants was widely used. He appeared on coins, there are statues all over Pompeii and there is another peculiarity that made him so popular. When Rome adopted another culture, she treated the gods of that culture as her own. Literal. They found the Roman god to be more similar to the local god and insisted that they were the same.

First they did it with the Greeks, and when they dealt with the Celts it caused Mercury to syncretize with Lugus. Known in Ireland as Lugh and in Wales as... Lleu. Lou... Lou too? - Don't know. Sorry, Wales... - who was widely seen as the creator of all the arts, as well as being a badass warrior king and all. The Romans saw him as a patron of commerce, which is why they equated him with Mercury, a friend of commerce. And if this isn't crazy enough for you, when the Romans dealt with the Germanic peoples, they equated Mercury with Odin!

Was it because they were travelers? Was it because they were psychopomps? Was it that hat and cane combination? Unclear! But the Romans knew for sure that the Germans worshiped Mercury like Odin. The Ptolemaic Greeks syncretized Hermes with several gods, including Thoth and Anubis. Thoth for their mutual intelligence and I think his tendency to write things down and Anubis for their shared psychopompous tasks. Hermes was everywhere, which is honestly so fitting! Hermes also appears in many of Aesop's fables for some reason... I don't know why. Hermes is a multifaceted god, but I can't say for sure why he is so literally iconic.

There are some possibilities. Perhaps his speed and mobility fit our modern society. Perhaps he is one of the few Olympians who combines sympathetic character traits with a general lack of disturbing character flaws. Perhaps because medicine, communication and capitalism are central to most societies and also to what it represents. Don't know. Whatever the reason, Hermes' liminal status helps him slip into the cracks of almost any society and stay there... forever! Appearing in unexpected places centuries later. He has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that keeps him in the popular consciousness long after the rest of the pantheon of him has faded into novelty or obscurity.

I mean, I get it. It's just fun! I always loved trickster gods. What do you want of me?