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Period 4 Hermes

Page history last edited by Michelle Costa 1 yr ago

Hermes

Cattle Thief, Trickster, and Messenger of the Gods

 

  The Greek god known as Hermes and the Roman god known as Mercury are actually the same character throughout the two versions of mythology, born under normal circumstances (see the story below for more details about the birth of the god Hermes) to the goddess, Maia, daughter of Atlas the Titan, and the powerful god Zeus[1].  Hermes is the god of gamblers, thieves, commerce, travelers, livestock, messages, eloquence, skill, and cunning; Mercury, on the other hand, is not the god of thieves, but still embodies each of the other attributes.  Overall, Hermes is represented by his symbols: the lyre, the winged helmet, the winged sandals, and the caduceus, a winged staff with two snakes swirled around the pole of the staff[2].  The offspring of Hermes includes Pan, Abderus, and Hermaphroditus.

 

 

 

 

     The most crucial aspect of Hermes is that instead of being the basis of numerous myths, he is a side character in approximately one-third of all of Greek and Roman mythology.  In Persephone’s myth, Hermes, one of the few gods permitted to travel from the Overworld into Hades’ land, and certainly one of the only gods in Hades’ good favor, is instructed to travel with a message from Zeus, commanding that Persephone be freed from the Land of the Dead, [3] some versions of the tale even stating that Hermes is the god who realized that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds that would force her to remain in the Underworld[4].  In Pandora’s myth,  when Zeus instructs each of the gods to bestow a “gift” upon his creation of Pandora, Hermes is the giver of cunning, deceit, endless speech,[5] in various accounts of the story, even the giver of the famed Pandora’s box,[6] in addition to being the messenger that brings the girl to the Titian Epimetheus.  In the numerous myths of Hera’s rivalry against Io, Hermes sings the monster Argos to sleep, then kills him in order to rescue Io from hertransformation as a cow[7].  In the stories of Hercules, Hermes transports the young hero to the Land of the Dead in addition to the dead souls that he regularly delivers during his job as messenger of the dead working for Hades[8].  In the myth of the golden apple thrown by Eris, the goddess of discord,[9] Zeus commands that Hermes bring Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to the fields of Paris’s home so that the mortal can judge which is the most beautiful of the goddesses [10].  In Odysseus’s epic, Hermes, in disguise as an ordinary human, warns Odysseus that the woman known as Circe is in reality a terrifying witch, who would turn Odysseus into a pig, and, in various versions of the story, Hermes even provides a potion or herb to counteract the magic, allowing the adventure to escape unharmed , then later providing Odysseus with a raft to escape an island on which he was trapped[11].  Lastly, in the myth of Perseus’s battle against Medusa, Hermes lends the hero his winged sandals, which, in one account of the tale, he is forced to do by Athena, and instructs Perseus to kill Medusa by looking only in the reflection of his mirrored shield [12]. 

  

 

 

     However, although Hermes is involved in all these aforementioned myths in addition to many more, he also has one myth of his own.  Hermes, born to Maia, the daughter of Atlas, and Zeus, could already be considered a trickster on the very first day of his life, certainly a “precocious” child.  Within the first six hours of his existence, Hermes locates an enormous tortoise shell outside his cave, and from its shell creates an instrument which he names a lyre[13].  Within another six hours, Hermes already tires of his new toy and escapes from his home to explore the nearby pastures of Apollo’s herd of beautifully white cows. One account of the myths claims that the crows nesting in the tree located on the pastures warned Hermes that the cows belonged to the god Apollo,[14] however, either way, knowing who the cattle belonged to or not, one-day-old Hermes still steels the cows, forcing the cows to walk backwards in order to confuse the trail left behind[15].  After a long, tiring search, the god Apollo locates the thief of his cattle, the young Hermes, and is impressed by the one-day-old’s cleverness.  However, Hermes superiorly claims that he has already sacrificed the cattle to the twelve great gods, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Artemis, Ares, Athena, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Hermes himself.  Zeus finds the whole incident humorous, but Apollo is outraged, and to pacify the angry god, Hermes is forced to surrender his new instrument, the lyre, to Apollo[16].

 

 

 01 Olympic Fanfare and Theme for orchestra.wma 

 

Michelle Costa

Footnotes

  1. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲
  2. Brush Up Your Mythology by Michael Macrone ▲
  3. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  4. Greek Myths by Jacqueline Morley ▲
  5. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  6. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲
  7. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  8. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  9. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲
  10. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  11. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲
  12. Greek Myths by Jacqueline Morley ▲
  13. Greek Myths by Jacqueline Morley ▲
  14. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲
  15. Greek Mythology For Everyone by Donald Richardson ▲
  16. Greek Myths: Gods, Heroes and Monsters by Ellen Switzer and Costas ▲

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