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ORIGIN
The
origin of Hermes is obscure, like that of most Greek
deities, and so it provides a knotty problem for the
researcher. Several
scholars have attempted to unravel it, and although they
have rarely been in open dispute, the diversity of their opinions proclaims their
tacit disagreement with one another.
A short critical summary of the most widely held
views will follow in order to clear the ground.
The
views are all inconclusive, partly be-cause
they are based in every case upon anthropological inference
only, partly because the various dilemmas which the problem
offers have not all been squarely faced.
We will deal first with the god’s original character since this has been of particular interest to
most scholars. The
best known theories are five in number.
The evidence for the first, which claims him as Wind
God, is non-existent. Most
popular is the second theory, which explains him as a
fertility and phallic god in origin.
Yet most of the evidence for this is late.
Homer,
Hesiod, and the late 7th century writer
of the Homeric Hymn to
Hermes know nothing of his alleged phallic character,
and he is completely anthropomorphic in early art.
The upright phallos, which represented him at Kyllene
in
Elis
,
is unique and the authors who report it are all late.
The strongest support for this theory has been the
ithyphallic herm, which, on anthropological grounds, would
argue a phallic origin.
But the earliest herms like the one from Siphnos do
not antedate the first quarter of the 6th
century; and it has recently been proved beyond doubt that
the origin of the phallic herm is to be sought in the cult
of Dionysus, not of Hermes.
Finally,
Hermes has almost nothing to do with the fertility of the
earth, having obtained an entry into the Andanian and
Eleusinian Mysteries as a pastoral, not as a vegetative
deity. Nor is
there early evidence to support the third theory that Hermes
was originally
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an
underworld divinity. The
Iliad is silent, and the Odyssey
knows him only as a guide to Hades.
The Homeric hymn barely mentions this activity and,
judging from the later literature and art, his chthonian
activity remained that of Psychopompos,
although his underworld associations rendered him in time
sufficiently awesome in the eyes of a few for them to invoke
him as a chthonian power.
Yet on the whole his position in Hades was a
subordinate one, to be understood not as a shorn heritage of
powers which he once posloss of which he was subsequently
deprived, but as a development of his function of guide.
This development was both facilitated and encouraged
by a widespread change in burial customs at the end of the
Bronze Age.
HIS
NAME
Professor Rose has stated
that the Arcadians found Hermes in
Arcadia
when they arrived there, and that his name is not Greek
(cited in Guthrie 1954:87-8); and Professor Nilson declared:
'The name is one of the few that are etymologically
transparent and means "he of the stone-heap" (op.
cit. 88). The
same approach is taken by Burkert, who said that Hermes’
name 'is explained with fair certainty' and that it 'points
to one single phenomenon: herma
is a heap of stones, a monument set up as an elementary
form of demarcation' (Burkert 1985:156).
So it seems that Hermes is an ancient god of the
countryside, whose name derived from the Greek word έρμα
(herma) or ερμαίον
(hermaion),
meaning 'a heap of stones'.
The function of these stone-heaps was to demarcate
the land.
Another form of territorial demarcation is
phallic display, which is then symbolically replaced by
erected stones or stakes.
To this extent, stone-heap and apotropaic phallos
have always gone together (see vase painting on p. 14).
Phallic figures were carved in wood and planted on
top of the
cairns
. The
stone-form was introduced in Athens about 520 by Hipparchos,
the son of Pisistratos, to mark the midway points between
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