Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/270

a great resident god, Artemidorus^[1] saw a representation of Hermes which was merely a large phallus, and Pausanias beheld the same sacred object, which was adored with peculiar reverence.^[2] Such was Hermes in the Elean region, whence he derived his name, Cyllenian.^[3] He was a god 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 gods, and guide of the ghosts of men outworn, the giver of good fortune, the lord of the crowded marketplace, 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.^[4] But whether the pastoral Hermes of the Pelasgians was refined into the messenger-god of Homer, or whether the name and honours of that god 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 god 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.^[5] In one case, where he is represented with a ram on his shoulder, the legend explained that by carrying a ram round

1. Artem., i. 45.
2. Paus., vi. 26, 3.
3. Homeric Hymns, iii. 2.
4. But see Welcker, i. 343, for connection between his name and his pastoral functions.
5. Pausanias, ii. 3, 4.