Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/489

Rh CHAP, him unconsciously to handle all his materials in strict accordance with the leading idea. That the meaning of the myth of Hermes had ' not been so far forgotten, will perhaps be generally conceded.

The idea of sound, which underlies all the incidents of the Hermes, Homeric hymn, explains most of the attributes and inventions ascribed senger and to Hermes. The soft music of the breeze would at once make him the author of the harp or lyre. As driving the clouds across the blue fields of heaven, he would be the messenger of Apollon, and tliis office would soon be merged in that of the herald of Zeus and all the gods. As such again, he would be skilled in the use of words, and he would be employed in tasks where eloquence was needed. Thus he appears before Priam in the time of his anguish, not in his divine character, but as one of the servants of Achilleus, and, by the force of his words alone, persuades the old man to go and beg the body of Hektor.^ So too he wins the assent of Hades to the return of Perse- phone from the under world." Hermes thus became associated with all that calls for wisdom, tact, and skill in the intercourse between man and man, and thus he is exhibited at once as a cunning thief, and as the presiding god of wealth.^ It is possible, however, or likely, that in later times, the functions of Hermes were largely multiplied by a confusion between words, the fruitful source of secondary myths. If such words as ep/xT/vei'a and ipfxrjveveLv, to interpret, are to be traced to the name Hermes, there are others, as epfxa, a prop, ep/taKcs, heaps of stones, ip/j-aTiC^iv, to ballast a ship, which clearly can have nothing to do with it. Yet on the strength of these words Hermes becomes a god of boundaries, the guardian of gymnasia, and lastly the patron of gymnastic games ; and his statues were thus placed at the entrance of the Agora.* The cause of this confusion M. Breal finds in the

' //. xxiv. 400. importance for all who wish to determine xxviii. The so-called Orphic hymns, cern even the germ of this idea in the as we have seen, string together all the //tad or Oi/j'sscy. The Latin god Mer- epithets which the conceptions or in- curius is, it is true, simply a god of ferences of poets and niythographers traffickers (merx, mercari) : but he had accumulated during a long series of possessed not a single attribute in ages. Among these the epithet Tris- common with the Hellenic Hermes ; and megistos, the " ter maximus Hermes" the Fetiales persistently refused to admit of Ausonius, has degenerated into the their identfty, in spite of the fashion supposed Saracenic idol Termagant. — which attached the Greek myths to Latin Grimm, Z>. M. 137. deities with which they had nothing to brought to the later developements a thief, a guide, or a messenger — but which connected him in some degree not a merchant. WTiatevcr honours he with traffic and mercliandise. Of this may have apart from his inherent powers notion not a trace can be found in the of song and miscliief are bestowed on so-called Homeric Hymn to Hermes, him by Phoibos. which must be regarded as of the first With Hermes Agoraios we might be
 * Ifymn to Dcmctcr, 335. the character of the god : and it is, to
 * TrovTod6TT]s' 7ratyKa.iTijos. Orph. say the least, extremely dilTicult to dis-
 * Hermes Agoraios. We are thus do. The Hellenic Hermes is a harper,