Home  ›  Hermes

Hermes

Ingenui Hermes, Roman copy of a Greek original of the fifth century BC. JC , Pio-Clementino Museum , Vatican

In Greek mythology , Hermes ( / the name Greek , / Dorian ) is one of the gods of Olympus. He is the god of commerce, the guardian of roads and intersections, travelers, thieves, who guides the hero, is lucky, the conductor of souls to Hades , the messenger of the gods (particularly of Zeus ) and the inventor of weights and measures. It is the Mercury of the Romans.

Summary

/ / Myth

Youth

Son of Zeus and Maia . According to the first Homeric Hymn dedicated to him, he bounded from his crib just moments after his birth, and goes in search of the herd of Apollo . On his way he meets a turtle that kills; of the carapace, it manufactures a lyre on which he celebrates his own birth and the home of his mother turtle shell . Some time later, he invented the panpipes or syrinx .

Pursuing his first design, he won the same night the Pieria , where the herds graze divine . He steals fifty oxen to his half-brother Apollo , or half of a massacre . He took the opportunity to invent the shoe, to cover his tracks when he pushes the beasts before him, but also walk with a lighter foot . In trying to cook two of the animals, he finds the art of making fire by rubbing sticks against each other , then spends the meat to the twelve gods. Itself fails to touch the sacrifice. After dispersing the ashes, he returned to his mother in which he announced his intention to confidently embrace the best of trades, that is to say that a thief .

When Apollo discovered the thief, Hermes begins by pretending to be a newborn without malice, even offering to swear his innocence on the head of Zeus . The archer god is not fooled, and wants to take his half-brother by the arm when Hermes stops by a sneeze. The case was finally brought before Zeus. Again, Hermes protested his innocence. Amused by the precocity of his son, King of Gods directs reconciliation; Hermes will also reveal where he hid the herd . Hermes charm his brother playing the lyre, and then gives the instrument Apollo grants him in exchange for a golden wand, the future caduceus , and the gift of prophecy minor through the oracle of Thrie (Women- bee ) .

According to Pausanias , he was raised by Acacos son of Lycaon , also founder of Acacsion in Arcadia , where his epiclesis of "Acacsien.

Love and Lineage

It often appears in the guise of a young man "in his first beard in the charm of this age . He delights in the company of the Graces and Hours. The sight of Ares and Aphrodite captured by Hephaestus , he exclaims that he too would sleep in the arms of the goddess, even at the price of three times as many channels.

Precisely with Aphrodite, Hermes leads bisexual deity, but Eros in the traditions later . It is, according to the authors, the father of gods rustic unbridled sexuality like Pan , his son "the girl Dryops" ( Homeric Hymn to Pan ) or by the nymph Thymbra or Hybris ( Pseudo-Apollodorus ), or by nymph Penelope (the Dionysia ), or by Penelope , the wife of Ulysses (various post-Homeric tales) as the god Pan or phallic Priapus , sometimes also given to his son ( Hyginus , Fables), it is also often represented sex erect (he loves the human beauty), and his loves are both female ( nymphs ) than men ( Pollux , twin brother of Castor and valiant warrior archetype, or the beautiful Anthos Assessos for example). Hesiod tradition lends him love with the nymph-goddess Calypso , encountered by Odysseus in the Odyssey, which makes the father of the people of Cephallenians ( Hesiod , Catalogue of Women ). We also ranks among the suitors willing to Persephone and various songs of Dionysian (including VI) recognize him as his wife Peitho , the goddess of Persuasion. Pindar, finally, assign the paternity of a daughter, the goddess messenger Anglica , without indicating the name of the mother of the latter (Pindar, Olympic Ode 8. 81 ff.).

Hermes is also the father of famous mythological lovers like Abdera (lover of Heracles ) and Daphnis (Pan or Apollo).

His other children include notably:

Functions

Psychopomp Hermes, the Painter of lekythos Phiale, v. 450 BC. BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen of Munich

During the Trojan War , he sided with the Achaeans but little involvement in the battle. But he comes face to Leto the mother of Apollo and Artemis, but refuses to fight. He is content to be the messenger and interpreter (it approximates its name from / hermnes, "interpreter") of Zeus. Thus, it guides the Mount Ida Aphrodite, Athena and Hera who compete for the golden apple, for submission to the ruling Pris. He escorts Priam , who came to collect the body of Hector , the Greek camp, he warns (unsuccessfully) Aegisthus not to kill Agamemnon and shall provide to Calypso order to release Odysseus. After the war, he will take Helen in Egypt.

Similarly, it was he who, according to the pseudo-Apollodorus , to remove Io at the request of Zeus, killed Argos with a hundred eyes, placed under surveillance by Hera, hence its epiclesis of "Argiphonte ( / Argeiphnts, killer of Argos) - the interpretation of this epithet is questionable, however: the legend of Argos is probably after Homer , which already employs this epiclesis, another interpretation translates as "white light, dazzling. " Guide heroes like Athena , he led Perseus in his quest for Medusa and guide Heracles in Hades.

Is the conductor of souls to Hades , hence its epithet / Pompaos, and later "Psychopompe" (in Greek / Psukhopomps). At the end of the Odyssey, is seen as leading contenders in the souls of the meadow of Asphodel. Orphic Hymn to Hermes spent underground, chthonic or hellish, said the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite ( Orphic Hymns , 57).

Worship

Hermaque stone stele, 129-138 AD. BC, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

It is primarily the personification of ingenuity, mestizo, or cunning intelligence and luck. So the god of commerce, travelers and thieves, shepherds and their flocks, as well as speakers or prostitutes. It is, among the Greek gods, the men closest and most sympathetic to them: it gives them the script , the dance , weights and measures, the flute and the lyre, the means to produce a spark when the fire was extinguished. It was customary to place piles of stones in his honor at the crossroads: Each traveler added a stone to the edifice. These piles of stones were gradually supplanted by boundary stone phallic shape placed along the roads leading to the square and squared form of Hermes , surmounted by the god's head and bearing in the center and embossed his manly attributes (see the scandal of female Hermes Hermocopides , which was involved Alcibiades ). Any meeting or unforeseen accident on a road is called "gift of Hermes (Greek / hermaion also means that our luck). It gives voice to Pandora the first woman and take her to men.

It is also, with Hercules , the patron of gymnasia and gymnasia where his bust is always present. It protects the athletes and is the founder of competition control.

Favorite offerings of Hermes as god of speakers, are milk mixed with honey and languages of animals.

Although it is a very popular god, his cult audience is small. Several regions of Greece, primarily the Argolid , integrate into their schedule a month that is dedicated to him, / Hermaeus (mid-October to mid-November). He seems to have been associated with a feast of the dead. In a similar token, a sacrifice offered to him, always at Argos , the thirtieth day following the funeral. In Athens , the third day of Anthesteria , an offering of grain oatmeal is dedicated to Hermes chthonic.

It is celebrated as the Kadmilos the sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace as companion Axieros- Demeter , the Great Mother.


Epithets, attributes and shrines

Statue of Hermes in the gardens of Versailles

Equivalents

The times and in the late Hellenistic Egypt, it will merge with Thoth (Greek name - the name was Egyptian Djehuty), the god of hidden knowledge, becoming the legendary author, under the name of Hermes the three times more large, or Trismegistos, or Hermes Trismegistus , a veritable library esoteric that nourish including studies of the alchemists of the Middle Ages.

In Islam, he is identified Idris , a prophet mentioned in the Quran (XIX, 57; XXI, 85).

three Hermes

"Genealogy most traditional of Hermes in the Hellenistic period was developed in the Third or second century before Christ. It starts the series by Hermes Thoth , who engraved his knowledge on stelae and hid. His son was Agathodaimon Agathodaimon ... The son of Hermes is the second, he's only later, in the second century AD, often called Trismegistus ... And Trismegistus is the son of Tat "(Antoine Faivre ).

Cicero five Mercury (On the Nature of the Gods, III):

"With regard to Mercury, the first one to Father Sky and Mother's Day and, according to tradition, having been struck by the sight of Proserpine, was seized by a frenzy obscene, the second, son of Valens and Phoroneus, lives underground, and he is identified Trophonius and the third is the third son of Jupiter and Maia; him and Penelope, according to tradition, born Pan and the fourth had the father of the Nile and the Egyptians see as impious to pronounce his name, and the fifth References

Leave a Reply

0 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 vote, average: 0.00 out of 51 vote, average: 0.00 out of 50 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5 (0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated)
Loading ... Loading ...
Help us improve the wiki Send Your Comments