Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 26

HERMES.

Another child of Zeus whose elemental origin and character have been much debated is Hermes. The meaning of the name** is confessedly obscure.

Opinion, then, is divided about the elemental origin of Hermes and the meaning of his name. His character must be sought, as usual, in ancient poetic myth and in ritual and religion. Herodotus recognised his rites as extremely old, for that is the meaning of his remark*** that the Athenians borrowed them from the Pelasgians, who are generally recognised as prehistoric Greeks.

** Preller, i. 307. The name of Hermes is connected by Welcker (Griesch. Got., i. 342) with (-----), and he gives other examples of the aeolic use of o for e. Compare Curtius's Greek Etymology, English translation, 1886, vol.

i. p. 420. Mr. Max Muller, on the other hand (Lectures, ii.

468), takes Hermes to be the son of the Dawn. Curtius reserves his opinion. Mr. Max Muller recognises Saramejas and Hermes as deities of twilight. Preller (i. 309) takes him for a G.o.d of dark and gloaming.

*** Herod., ii. 61.

In the rites spoken of, the images of the G.o.d were in one notable point like well-known Bushmen and Admiralty Island divine representations, and like those of Priapus.* In Cyllene, where Hermes was a great resident G.o.d, Artemidorus** saw a representation of Hermes which was merely a large phallus, and Pausanias beheld the same sacred object, which was adored with peculiar reverence.*** Such was Hermes in the Elean region, whence he derived his name, Cyllenian.**** He was a G.o.d of "the liberal shepherds," conceived of in the rudest aspect, perhaps as the patron of fruitfulness in their flocks. Manifestly he was most unlike the graceful swift messenger of the G.o.ds, and guide of the ghosts of men outworn, the giver of good fortune, the lord of the crowded market-place, the teacher of eloquence and of poetry, who appears in the literary mythology of Greece. Nor is there much in his Pelasgian or his Cyllenian form to suggest the elemental deity either of gloaming, or of twilight, or of the storm.*****

* Can the obscene story of Cicero (De Nat. Deor., iii. 22, 56) be a repet.i.tion of the sacred chapter by which Herodotus says the Pelasgians explained the attribute of the image?

** Artem., i. 45.

*** Paus., vi. 26, 3.

**** Homeric Hymns, iii. 2.

***** But see Welcker, i. 343, for connection between his name and his pastoral functions.

But whether the pastoral Hermes of the Pelasgians was refined into the messenger-G.o.d of Homer, or whether the name and honours of that G.o.d were given to the rude Priapean patron of the shepherds by way of bringing him into the Olympic circle, it seems impossible to ascertain. These combinations lie far behind the ages of Greece known to us in poetry and history. The province of the G.o.d as a deity of flocks is thought to be attested by his favourite companion animal the ram, which often stood beside him in works of art.* In one case, where he is represented with a ram on his shoulder, the legend explained that by carrying a ram round the walls he saved the city of Tanagra from a pestilence.** The Arcadians also represented him carrying a ram under his arm.*** As to the phallic Hermae, it is only certain that the Athenian taste agreed with that of the Admiralty Islanders in selecting such unseemly images to stand beside every door. But the connection of Hermes with music (he was the inventor of the lyre, as the Homeric Hymn sets forth) may be explained by the musical and poetical character of old Greek shepherd life.

If we could set aside the various elemental theories of Hermes as the storm-wind, the twilight, the child of dawn, and the rest, it would not be difficult to show that one moral conception is common to his character in many of its varied aspects. He is the G.o.d of luck, of prosperity, of success, of fortunate adventure. This department of his activity is already recognised in Homer. He is giver of good luck.****

He is "Hermes, who giveth grace and glory to all the works of men".

Hence comes his Homeric name, the luck-bringer. The last cup at a feast is drunk to his honour "for luck".

* Pausanias, ii. 8, 4.

** For Hermes, G.o.d of herds and flocks, see Preller, i.

322-325.

*** Pausanias, v. 27, 5.

**** Iliad, xiv. 491; Od. 15, 319.

Where we cry "Shares!" in a lucky find, the Greek cried "Hermes in common!" A G.o.dsend was (------). Thus among rough shepherd folk the luck-bringing G.o.d displayed his activity chiefly in making fruitful the flocks, but among city people he presided over the mart and the public a.s.sembly, where he gave good fortune, and over musical contests.* It is as the lucky G.o.d that Hermes holds his "fair wand of wealth and riches, three-leafed and golden, which wardeth off all evil"** Hermes has thus, among his varied departments, none better marked out than the department of luck, a very wide and important province in early thought. But while he stands in this relation to men, to the G.o.ds he is the herald and messenger, and, in some undignified myths, even the pander and accomplice. In the Homeric Hymn this child of Zeus and Maia shows his versatile character by stealing the oxen of Apollo, and fas.h.i.+oning the lyre on the day of his birth. The theft is sometimes explained as a solar myth; the twilight steals the bright days of the sun-G.o.d. But he could only steal them day by day, whereas Hermes lifts the cattle in an hour.*** The surname of Hermes, is usually connected with the slaying of Argus, a supernatural being with many eyes, set by Hera to watch Io, the mistress of Zeus.****

* See also Preller, i. 326, note 3.

** Hymn, 529. See Custom and Myth, "The Divining Rod ".

*** Preller, i. 316, note 2; Welcker, Gr. Got, i. 338, and note 11.

**** aesch., Prom. Vinct, 568.

Hermes lulled the creature to sleep with his music and cut off his head.

This myth yields a very natural explanation if Hermes be the twilight of dawn, and if Argus be the many-eyed midnight heaven of stars watching Io, the moon. If Hermes be the storm-wind, it seems just as easy to say that he kills Argus by driving a cloud over the face of heaven. In his capacity as the swift-winged messenger, who, in the _Odyssey_, crosses the great gulf of the sea, and scarce brushes the brine with his feathers, Hermes might be explained, by any one so minded, either as lightning or wind. Neither hypothesis suits very well with his duties as guide of the ghosts, whom he leads down darkling ways with his wand of gold.* In this capacity he and the ghosts were honoured at the Athenian All-Souls' day, in February.**

Such are the chief mythic aspects of Hermes. He has many functions; common to all of them is the power of bringing all to a happy end. This resemblance to twilight, "which bringeth all things good," as Sappho sang, may be welcome to interpreters who see in Hermes a personification of twilight. How ingeniously, and even beautifully, this crepuscular theory can be worked out, and made to explain all the activities of Hermes, may be read in an essay of Paul de St. Victor.*** What is the dawn? The pa.s.sage from night to day. Hermes therefore is the G.o.d of all such fleet transitions, blendings, changes. The messenger of the G.o.ds, he flits before them, a heavenly amba.s.sador to mortals. Two light wings quiver on his rounded cap, _the vault of heaven in little_....

* Odyssey, xxiv. 1-14.

** Preller, i. 330, and see the notes on the pa.s.sage. The ceremonies were also reminiscent of the Deluge.

*** Les Deux Masques, i. 316-326.

The highways cross and meet and increase the meetings of men; so Hermes, the ceaseless voyager, is their protecting genius.... Who should guide the ghosts down the darkling ways but the deity of the dusk; sometimes he made love to fair ghostly maids whom he attended. So easy is it to interpret all the functions of a G.o.d as reflections of elemental phenomena. The origin of Hermes remains obscure; but he is, in his poetical shape, one of the most beautiful and human of the deities. He has little commerce with the beasts; we do not find him with many animal companions, like Apollo, nor adored, like Dionysus, with a ritual in which are remnants of animal-wors.h.i.+p. The darker things of his oldest phallic forms remain obscure in his legends, concealed by beautiful fancies, as the old wooden phallic figure, the gift of Cecrops, which Pausanias saw in Athens, was covered with myrtle boughs. Though he is occasionally in art represented with a beard, he remains in the fancy as the Odysseus met him, "Hermes of the golden wand, like unto a young man, with the first down on his cheek, when youth is loveliest".

DEMETER.

The figure of Demeter, the _mater dolorosa_ of paganism, the sorrowing mother seated on the stone of lamentation, is the most touching in Greek mythology. The beautiful marble statue found by Mr. Newton at Cnidos, and now in the British Museum, has the sentiment and the expression of a Madonna. Nowhere in ancient religion was human love, regret, hope and _desiderium_ or wistful longing typified so clearly as in the myth and ritual of Demeter. She is severed from her daughter, Persephone, who goes down among the dead, but they are restored to each other in the joy of the spring's renewal. The mysteries of Eleusis, which represented these events in a miracle-play, were certainly understood by Plato and Pindar and aeschylus to have a mystic and pathetic significance. They shadowed forth the consolations that the soul has fancied for herself, and gave promise of renewed and undisturbed existence in the society of all who have been dear on earth. Yet Aristophanes, in the _Frogs_, ventures even here to bring in his raillery, and makes Xanthias hint that the mystae, the initiate, "smell of roast-pig". No doubt they had been solemnly sacrificing, and probably tasting the flesh of the pig, the sacred animal of Demeter, whose bones, with clay or marble _figurines_ representing him, are found in the holy soil of her temples.

Thus even in the mystery of Demeter the grotesque, the barbaric element appears, and it often declares itself in her legend and in her ritual.

A scientific study of Demeter must endeavour to disentangle the two main factors in her myth and cult, and to hold them apart. For this purpose it is necessary to examine the development of the cult as far as it can be traced.

As to the name of the G.o.ddess, for once there is agreement, and even certainty. It seems hardly to be disputed that Demeter is Greek, and means _mother-earth or earth the mother_.*

* Welcker, Oriech. QML, i. 385-387; Preller, i. 618, note 2; Maury, Rel. des Grdes, L 69. Apparently "A" still means earth in Albanian; Max Muller, Selected Essays, ii. 428.

There is his mythological panacea. Mannhardt is all for "Corn-mother,"

Corn being nothing peculiarly h.e.l.lenic or Aryan in the adoration of earth. A comparative study of earth-wors.h.i.+p would prove it to be very widely diffused, even among non-European tribes. The Demeter cult, however, is distinct enough from the myth of Gaea, the Earth, considered as, in conjunction with Heaven, the parent of the G.o.ds. Demeter is rather the fruitful soil regarded as a person than the elder t.i.tanic formless earth personified as Gaea. Thus conceived as the foster-mother of life, earth is wors.h.i.+pped in America by the Shawnees and Potawatomies as _Me-mk-k.u.m-mik-o-kwi_, the "mother of earth" It will be shown that this G.o.ddess appears casually in a Potawatomie legend, which is merely a savage version of the sacred story of Eleusis.* Tacitus found that Mother Hertha was adored in Germany with rites so mysterious that the slaves who took part in them were drowned. "Whereof ariseth a secret terror and an holy ignorance what that should be which they only see who are a-peris.h.i.+ng."** It is curious that in the folk-lore of Europe, up to this century, food-offerings to the earth were _buried_ in Germany and by Gipsies; for the same rite is practised by the Potawatomies.***

* Compare Maury, Religions de la Grece, i. 72.

** Germania, 40, translation of 1622.

*** Compare Tylor, Prim. Cult, ii. 273, with Father De Smet, Oregon Missions, New York, 1847, p. 351.

The Mexican Demeter, Centeotl, is well known, and Acosta's account of religious ceremonies connected with harvest in Mexico and Peru might almost be taken for a description of the Greek _Eiresione_. The G.o.d of agriculture among the Tongan Islanders has one very curious point of resemblance to Demeter. In the Iliad (v. 505) we read that Demeter presides over the fanning of the grain. "Even as a wind carrieth the chaff about the sacred thres.h.i.+ng-floors when men are winnowing, _what time golden Demeter, in rush of wind_, maketh division of grain and chaff.".... Now the name of the "G.o.d of wind, and weather, rain, harvest and vegetation in general" in the Tongan Islands is Alo-Alo, literally "to fan".* One is reminded of Joachim Du Bellay's poem, "To the Winnowers of Corn". Thus from all these widely diffused examples it is manifest that the idea of a divinity of earth, considered as the mother of fruits, and as powerful for good or harm in harvest-time, is anything but peculiar to Greece or to Aryan peoples. In her character as potent over this department of agriculture, the Greek G.o.ddess was named "she of the rich thres.h.i.+ng-floors," "of the corn heaps," "of the corn in the ear," "of the harvest-home," "of the sheaves," "of the fair fruits," "of the goodly gifts," and so forth.**

* Mariner's _Tonga Islands_, 1827, ii. 107. The Attic Eiresioni may be studied in Mannhardt, Wald und Feld Qultus, it 312, and Aztec and Peruvian harvest rites of a similar character in Custom and Myth, pp. 17-20. See also Prim.

Quit., ii. 306, for other examples.

** Welcker, ii, 468-470, a collection of such t.i.tles.

In popular Greek religion, then, Demeter was chiefly regarded as the divinity of earth at seed-time and harvest. Perhaps none of the G.o.ds was wors.h.i.+pped in so many different cities and villages, or possessed so large a number of shrines and rustic chapels. There is a pleasant picture of such a chapel, with its rural disorder, in the _Golden a.s.s_ of Apuleius. Psyche, in her search for Cupid, "came to the temple and went in, whereas behold she espied sheaves of corn lying on a heap, blades with withered garlands, and reeds of barley. Moreover, she saw hooks, scythes, sickles and other instruments to reape, but everie thing laide out of order, and as it were cast in by the hands of labourers; which when Psyche saw she gathered up and put everything in order." The chapel of Demeter, in short, was a tool-house, dignified perhaps with some rude statue and a little altar. Every village, perhaps every villa, would have some such shrine.

Behind these observances, and behind the harvest-homes and the rites--half ritual, half folk-lore--which were expected to secure the fertility of the seed sown, there lurked in the minds of priests and in the recesses of sanctuaries certain mystic and secret practices of adoration. In these mysteries Demeter was doubtless wors.h.i.+pped in her _Chthonian_ character as a G.o.ddess of earth, powerful over those who are buried in her bosom, over death and the dead. In these hidden mysteries of her cult, moreover, survived ancient legends of the usual ugly sort, tales of the amours of the G.o.ddess in b.e.s.t.i.a.l guise. Among such rites Pausanias mentions, at Hermione of Dryopian Argolis, the _fete_ of Chthonian Demeter, a summer festival. The procession of men, women, boys and priests dragged a struggling heifer to the doors of the temple, and thrust her in unbound. Within the fane she was butchered by four old women armed with sickles. The doors were then opened, and a second and third heifer were driven in and slain by the old women. "This marvel attends the sacrifice, that all the heifers fall on the same side as the first that was slain." There remains somewhat undivulged. "The things which they specially wors.h.i.+p, I know not, nor any man, neither native or foreigner, but only the ancient women concerned in the rite."*

In Arcadia there was a temple of Demeter, whose priests boasted a connection with Eleusis, and professed to perform the mysteries in the Eleusinian manner. Here stood two great stones, with another over them, probably (if we may guess) a prehistoric dolmen. Within the dolmen, which was so revered that the neighbours swore their chief oath by it, were kept certain sacred scriptures. These were read aloud once a year to the initiated by a priest who covered his face with a mask of Demeter. At the same time he smote the earth with rods, and called on the folk below the earth. Precisely the same practice, smiting the earth with rods, is employed by those who consult diviners among the Zulus.**

The Zulu woman having a spirit of divination says, "Strike the ground for them" (the spirits). "See, they say you came to inquire about something." The custom of wearing a mask of the deity wors.h.i.+pped is common in the religions of animal-wors.h.i.+p in Egypt, Mexico, the South Seas and elsewhere. The Aztec celebrant, we saw, wore a mask made of the skin of the thigh of the human victim. Whether this Arcadian Demeter was represented with the head of a beast does not appear; she had a mare's head in Phigalia. One common point between this Demeter of the Pheneatae and the Eleusinian is her _taboo_ on beans, which are so strangely mystical a vegetable in Greek and Roman ritual.***