Hermes

A busy first day

Maia gave birth to Hermes, her son by Zeus, in a cave on Mount Cyllene, away from the other gods. Hermes did not stay in his baby wrappings for long. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes, an early poem in his honour, sets out his first day like a timetable. He was born at dawn, played the lyre at midday and stole the cattle of his brother Apollo by evening.

The first thing he met was a tortoise at the doorway of the cave. Hermes greeted it as a creature welcome at feasts. Then, with a cheerfulness that is unsettling, he told it what would happen to it. Alive, it would protect against harm; dead, it would sing.

He took it inside. He stretched ox hide across its shell and added strings made from sheep gut, and so made the first lyre, a stringed instrument. From his first hours, the god’s charm came together with his disregard for what belonged to others.

Tracks that point the wrong way

Hermes went to Pieria and took 50 cattle from Apollo’s herd. He did more than drive them away. He turned them round so that their hoofprints seemed to lead back towards the pasture. He hid his own footprints by tying woven branches to his feet. Anyone who followed the tracks would go the wrong way.

Apollo still found the thief. By then Hermes was back in his cradle, curled up like a helpless newborn. He denied seeing or hearing anything. All he cared about, he said, were sleep, milk and warm baths, and he knew of cattle only from hearsay. The joke lies in the gap between how he looks and what the listeners have watched him do.

Apollo took him to Zeus. Still wrapped in his baby clothes, Hermes denied it all again and offered to swear he was innocent. Zeus laughed at the act, but he did not take it as the truth. He told the two brothers to make peace, and he ordered Hermes to lead Apollo to the hidden herd.

From theft to a place among the gods

At the cattle pen, Hermes played the lyre. Apollo’s anger turned into a longing for the instrument, and the quarrel became a trade. Hermes gave Apollo the lyre. Apollo gave up the cattle, and with them the shining whip that marked their keeper.

The deal set limits as well as making them friends. Apollo made Hermes swear never to steal the lyre or his bow. He gave Hermes a golden staff. He also gave him the bee-maidens, who were linked with divination, the art of reading the future from signs. Zeus gave Hermes further duties over flocks and signs, and the hymn links him with trade by barter among mortals.

The deal leaves the theft as dishonest as it was. What the gods did was turn a dangerous cleverness into recognised duties. Hermes can move objects, words and value from one owner to another, because he knows exactly how ownership can be hidden, challenged and agreed again.

A god of every crossing

His later roles follow from that first day. Hermes protected roads and travellers, carried messages for the gods and watched over trade. The Greeks called him Psychopompos, the guide of souls, because he led the dead from the world above to the world below. Roads, buying and selling, speech and death all involve a crossing from one state to another.

People set up images of Hermes at doors and gates and along roads. These spots were practical as well as symbolic. A traveller met the god at the point where one property, district or kind of place gave way to the next.

The great sanctuary at Olympia held one of his most famous statues in an unexpected room. The statue, said to be by the sculptor Praxiteles, stood in the Temple of Hera, the oldest temple at the sanctuary. It stood among objects linked with the sanctuary’s history and its games. Hermes needed no building of his own to be present there. He had left his cradle on the day he was born, and here he stood at the threshold of another god’s temple.