BOOK II.
Hermes
and the
Charites.
Hermes
the herald
word ipfj-L^Lov or ipfiu^Lov, commonly taken to signify a small statue of Hermes, but which might also mean a small prop or stay. This word efjfia M. Brt^al connects with the Greek eLpyw or l/a/cos; and the Latin arcere, erctum, may in the same way have led to the identi- fication of the Latin Ercules or Herculus, the god of boundaries, with the Greek Herakles. The word ep/xaiov, as denoting a god-send or treasure-trove, may belong to either the one root or the other.^
The office of Hermes connects him necessarily with many legends, and especially vdih those of Prometheus, 16, Paris, and Deukalion ; but it is more noteworthy that " as the Da-n in the Veda is brought by the bright Harits, so Hermes is called the leader of the Charites." ^ His worship, we are told, was instituted first in Arkadia, and thence transferred to Athens.^ That it may have been so is possible ; but in the absence of all historical eadence we cannot affirm it as fact : and no argument can be based on traditions concerned with such names as Athens, Arkadia, Ortygia, or Eleusis. If Hermes be the son of the twilight, or the first breeze of the morning, his worship would as certainly begin in Arkadia (the glistening land), or at Athens (the home of the Dawn), and his first temple be built by Lykaon (the gleaming), as the worship of Phoibos would spring up in the brilliant Delos, or by the banks of the golden Xanthos in the far-off Lykia or land of light, whence Sarpedon came to the help of Hektor. The reasons have been already given,* which seem to warrant the conclu- sion that historical inferences based on names which, although applied aftenvards to real cities or countries, come from the mythical cloud- land, can be likened only to castles built in the air.
The staff or rod which Hermes received from Phoibos, and which connects this myth with the special emblem of Vishnu,^ was regarded as denoting his heraldic office. It was, however, always endowed with magic properties, and had the power even of raising the dead.^ The fillets of this staff sometimes gave place to serpents ; and the golden sandals, which in the Iliad and Odyssey bear him through the air more swiftly than the wind, were at length, probably from the needs of the sculptor and the painter, fitted with wings, and the Orphic
naturally disposed to compare Apollon Aguieus, whose image, like that of Hermes, was a block of stone. But Mr. Brown {Great Dionysiak Myth, i. 358) thinks that we have here a verbal error, and that the name of the god was Aguios, the limbless, tlie giiia refer- ring especially to the lower limbs ; and that thus the name would be pecu- liarly appropriate to a terminal statue. ' See M. Bre'al's letter on this subject, inserted in Prof. Max Miiller's Lect. on Lang, second series, 474.
- iffm-Siv Xaplruv, jIax Miiller, id.
473-
- Hygin. Fad. 225.
- See book i. ch. x.
- See p. 180.
- Virg. .^n. iv. 242.
