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flambazz · 3 years

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Pantheons: Hermes

Author: Balsam

History: Ancient Mediterranean; Greek Pantheon

Which god in the Greek pantheon do you see the most of in your everyday life? If you had anyone who wasn’t Hermes in mind, you’re wrong. You’ll find images of him just about everywhere from his caduceus carved out of the stone of a hospital, to his head being shown on a car’s logo, to his winged sandals painted onto Goodyear tires. He’s literally everywhere. We even have a planet and a heavy metal, both existing under his Roman name Mercury. But who is he, really, in the scheme of pantheons?

Hermes, known to Rome as Mercury, was the Ancient Greek god of roads/journeys, travelers, merchants, trade/commerce, athletes, thieves, and trickery. His name shows up in Mycenaean scripts like Dionysus’ does, but in the pantheon itself he is rather young. Predominantly, he was recognized as a messenger god, but in a similar sense to Mycenaean Dionysus he was also revered as an underworld god due to being a psychopomp and being responsible for guiding the souls of the dead in addition to being responsible for guiding dreams. In his myths he has a habit of helping out the mortal heroes when they run into issues of some kind. Now, to understand his characterization and historical context, we need to understand where exactly in the realm of Ancient Greek mythology Hermes stands. Let’s get into it.

Hermes is incredibly young in Olympian standards, with Dionysus being the only one canonically younger. Born to the pleiad Maia and the son of Zeus (like just about everyone else), his birthplace is a cave in the mountains of Arcadia. He sets himself apart from other Olympians by getting into trouble literally the day he’s born. According to Homer’s Hymn to Hermes, the first thing to happen after being born was his finding a tortoise and turning its shell into a lyre. He gets hungry and decides the only sane thing to do is steal 50 of Apollo’s sacred cattle, turning their hooves backwards to attempt and prevent Apollo from noticing they’re gone. Stowing the cows, he sacrifices some to the gods and then shows up back in the cave to pretend to be a helpless baby. Maia doesn’t buy his bullsh*t so instead he takes his time and explains to his mom that he’s attempting to get the Olympians to notice him, and that he’s trying to get the respect and honor they deserve instead of being stuck in a cave for the rest of his immortality.

Meanwhile back in Narnia, Apollo can’t find his cows so he plays Sherlock Holmes and finds Hermes back in the cave. While Apollo tries interrogating him, Hermes basically pulls a Miles Morales and says “What cows?” So, Apollo drags him up to Zeus, who’s cackling like a madman and then tells him to show the way to the cows. On the way, Hermes starts playing his lyre and wins Apollo over. Apollo is enchanted by it and promises Hermes will be messenger of the gods, promising he and his mother will be honored among the Olympians. Hermes and Apollo exchange the lyre for the role of herdsman and return to Olympus, where Hermes promises never to steal from him again and gets his caduceus (small staff with two snakes around it; symbol of heralds/messengers). And so, Hermes makes an arrival as a trickster and underdog wrangling an improbable victory via cunning and tricks. One who, despite winning untold power/fame, still comes across as the underdog for multiple centuries following.

Hermes regularly appears in the mythology, playing a support role in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Iliad he is allied with the Achaeans for the majority but protects King Priam when he went to the Achaean camp to retrieve Hector’s body, and in the Odyssey he regularly provides help and advice for Odysseus including how to get Circe to break the enchantment on his men and then later guiding the suitor’s souls to the afterlife. This might have been because Odysseus is actually Hermes’ great-grandson (son of Autolycus). One of Hermes’ most well known accomplishments is killing Argus, a hundred-eyed giant hired to watch over Io after she got turned into a cow. Zeus asks him to free her, so Hermes shows up as a shepherd and bores him asleep with the story of panpipes then cuts his Argus’ off. This is what gave him the epithet of Argeiphontes (slayer of Argus). He’s also got a bunch of other appearances in Greek mythology, frequently helping out heroes like Perseus and Orestes by giving them the means to succeed. This trickery is one of Hermes’ major characteristics as the god of liars, thieves, and the other stuff in his purview. While these seem like things that maybe shouldn’t be attributed to a god, most Greek heroes were underdogs or tricksters in some way and trickery was well respected when used in moderation.

Before we get into the rest of the history, we have one kind of wacky thing about Hermes: The Herms. The Herms were boundary/border markers commonly found along roadways, usually with a depiction of Hermes’ face and always with a carving of a dong on them. I don’t know why that’s what was non-negotiable either but I wish I did. With Hermes being a god of borders and boundaries, it makes sense that he’d be the one to show up on most of the border markers but it’s also a little weird (not because of the dong). So we’re going to shove that into a corner for a bit and get into the history.

First off, Hermes used to be Pan (not pansexual, the god Pan). Let me explain that. Pan is a mysterious figure due to how old he is. Because of his age, we don’t have much clear information on his origin or development. As he was characterized in Ancient Greece, Pan is the god of the wilderness, shepherds and flocks, nature, mountain wilds, fields/groves/glens, sex and fertility, and theatrical critisism. He was a companion to the nymphs, is responsible for panic (as a concept and word), and he’s literally the legendary dong. His worship was almost exclusively in the mountains of Arcadia, which also happens to be the birthplace of Hermes. Arcadia is known for being inland, mountainous and forested, and extremely old compared to the rest of Ancient Greece.

As a wild god, Pan wasn’t worshipped in manmade structures. He was mostly worshipped in natural caves and only ever had two built temples (one in Peloponnese). In the mythology, Pan is older than the Olympians are, and is credited with giving Artemis her hunting dogs and Apollo the gift of prophecy. Most commonly, he is known for two things that bear his name: panpipes (syrinx) and panic (panikos). He created the syrinx when a nymph he was chasing became reeds to try and escape, and then he turned her into the syrinx so he could put his mouth all over her like a weirdo. As for panic (for people who don’t know what it is), it’s a kind of fear that is intense enough it borders madness. He is credited with it as, supposedly, he would yell in the wood and anyone who heard it would be inflicted with said panic, which could rout entire armies. And while we know some stuff about him, there’s even more that we either don’t know or it’s vague and fuzzy. For example, his parentage is incredibly vague and varied, which suggests he’s very old since that kind of myth takes a long time to drift.

In fact, it’s highly likely that Pan is older than even Mycenaean Greece. Comparative mythology scholars that are working on reconstructing Proto-Indo-European religion that spawned from the Vedic, Norse, and Greek mythologies theorize that Pan is an offshoot from the god PÉH2USōN (no I don’t know how to say it), whose only other offshoot is the Vedic pastoral deity Pushan.

The Rigveda mentions Pushan, and may be as old as 1700 BCE. This means that if Pan is an offshoot from the same deity, he also predates Mycenaean Greece (age started in 1600 BCE). However, due to lack of written sources, we don’t actually know how Pan was characterized at any point before the Mycenaean age, but we can learn by proxy by looking at Pushan.

Pushan is the Vedic god of roads/journeys, marriages, cattle herding/feeding, and the sun as a guardian figure. Like Hermes, Pushan also served as a psychopomp, but is associated with goats and got all his teeth knocked out that one time. So, the generally accepted theory we have is that way, way back before or during the Mycenaean age is when Hermes split from Pan, and before even that, the original Pan was incredibly similar to Pushan, a liminal god of navigating between places like roads, general wilderness, and the journey to the afterlife. When the original Pan got subdivided, current Pan retained the pastoralist and herding connotations, but the roads and journeys stuff went to Hermes and left Pan reduced. It’s worth noting that Hermes also has herding connotations.

Now, this isn’t just based on the fact that Hermes is somewhat similar to a Vedic deity. There are also some other, stranger connections the two have. For one, both of them have an origin in Arcadia along with their centers of worship. In some versions of mythology, Pan is Hermes' son for some reason. Which is a weird connection, but at the same time it does make sense to link them in a reverse way. It’s also surprisingly relevant; Hermes and Pan are both notorious in the mythos for having large dongs (I wish I didn’t have to talk about it but here we are). So, time to go back to the Herms mentioned earlier.

The word itself translates into “piled stones”. So Hermes’ name isn't even a name. But the concept of Herms is an extremely old concept in the region, older than Ancient Greece and Hermes both. Back before Herms were sculpted, roads were marked with large piles of stones. Lack of human features didn't make them less sacred, though, and Herms were revered. Custom was to put another stone on the pile or to anoint it with oil, and messing with them or defacing them was a horrible thing. Pan, as the old god of roads and journeys, was likely the god who was revered through said Herms. Now, remember how I said Hermes had an epithet because of killing Argus? Well he isn’t the only god who had them, in fact most if not all of them did and they described the capacity a god was worshipped in. In Pan’s case, the one I’m going to mention is ‘Pan Hermes’ (although we aren’t really sure) or ‘Pan of the piled boundary stones’. What we do know is that around the time he likely had this epithet, he got split into current Pan and the god Hermes. This happened at a very early time, and so we aren’t quite sure why Pan got separated from his epithet and Hermes got to be his own god.

What’s likely is that old Pan was a fairly specialized deity and so his worship was having issues expanding beyond rustic areas and wild lands. Whatever the reason, we know Hermes shows up in Mycenaean Linear B writing (or a word like Hermes), meaning he split from Pan before proper records. By the time we get to the 800s, Homer is writing epics and Hermes is firmly seated in the Olympians as is shown by his role in the Iliad and Pan is simply a wilderness god.

Oh, and for the people well acquainted with Greek Mythological esoterica or the Percy Jackson books; Pan is (technically) canonically dead. According to Plutarch writing from around 100 CE, a handful of decades earlier during the reign of Tiberius, a divine voice supposedly called out from Paksi to a man named Thamus telling him “The Great god Pan is dead.” Thamus then told everyone and they were reasonably bummed out about it. But for every sense that matters, Pan didn’t actually seem to die since his shines were still frequented and worship of him continued as usual. So what the hell?

Well, it’s likely that this is a big misunderstanding. See, the goddess Ishtar had a dead boyfriend named Tammuz who had a cult that got bright over to Greece. And in the Ancient Greek language, the sentence “Thamus, the Great god Pan is dead” is read as “Thamus panmegas tethneke”, however due to ‘pan’ being both the name of a god and the prefix meaning all, the sentence can also be read as “Tammuz the all-great is dead”. So this whole ‘Pan being dead’ thing might have just been some dude overhearing the cult of Tammuz praising him for his sole achievement and thinking they were talking about the god Pan being dead. So yeah.

Back to Hermes. In early Ancient Greece, Pan and Hermes didn’t look too dissimilar,and between 800 and 500 BCE Hermes was shown as an older man with a beard. But in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, he is shown the way we recognize him now; a young, beardless, mostly naked athlete. Dionysus also underwent a similar change but this isn’t about him. Time to talk about Roman Hermes; Mercury.

Most Roman and Greek deities started as gods in their own right. Mars, who is Ares’ roman counterpart, started as a god of war and as an agricultural deity and was treated notably better than Ares is. And for the most part Rome’s other gods were also fully-fledged deities, though sometimes other gods got mashed together like play-doh. For example, Pluto (Roman Hades) was accidentally the god of wealth, Plutus, and the god of the underworld, Pluton. But Mercury didn’t even exist. The name has sketchy etymology, but likely comes from either the Latin root for ‘merchant’ or a much older word for ‘boundary’. In either case the name is a descriptor of one of Hermes’ divine duties and nothing farther. He did absorb the Roman Dea Lucrii, a handful of minor deities in charge of immoral profit coming from bad sources, but Mercury was basically just Roman Hermes.

During the Roman era, Hermes was extremely popular. And since Rome was the expansion kings, Hermes’ status as a trade and merchants god saw a bunch of use. He showed up on coins, imagery of him is in Pompeii, and he has another quirk making him so popular. Rome had a policy of taking and incorporating the gods of places they conquered into their pantheon in one way or another, finding the Roman god closest to whichever god it was and insisting they’re the same. This happened with the Greeks and the Celts where they likened Mercury to Lugh/Lleu who was a big deal seeing as he was the creator of all arts along with being a warrior-hero-king. Rome saw him as a commerce god and so he was equaled to Mercury. And when Rome dealt with the Germanic peoples, Mercury god likened to Odin, of all people. The Ptolemaic Greeks (oh god) equated Hermes with gods like Thoth and Anubis.

Hermes was all over the place, which is very appropriate, even showing up in Aesop’s fables for some reason. But for being such a versatile deity, why is he so (literally) iconic? We don’t know. Perhaps his mobility and speed resonates with our modern society? Maybe it’s because he’s one of the few of the Olympians to combine likable traits with a lack of distractingly terrible character flaws? Maybe it’s because medicine, communication, and capitalism are central qualities of many societies as well as his character. But his liminal status gets him in most every society and kind of just stays forever, turning up in places centuries later down the line.

If you read all of this, thank you and please reblog so more people can see and learn!

#greek mythology #ancient greek #tw long post #hermes #not story #original post #tw food #flambazz

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rimalovegood · 7 years

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Did somebody say PJOxMysMes headcanons?

Well I was thinking how much of a child of Apollo V is and it scalated quickly...

Zen

You know this… there is no surprise here… Son of Aphrodite, not much to say… I imagine he got his good looks from Aphrodite and that’s the reason his family hates him. Like his mom is reminded of her husband’s affair every time she looks at the beautiful child and his father feels ashamed for the same reason while his brother has no idea of this so he treats him better…. Ok, too much drama.

Jaehee

Daughter of Athena turned Hunter of Artemis. I have no doubts. She is immensely intelligent, she keeps everybody else focused and has too much pressure over her shoulders, that’s why she joins the hunt and leaves all the other nonsense behind.

Jumin

Son of Hades, everybody things he is scary but deep inside he is a softie, he is interested in paranormal stuff… I was going with Hecate at first but Hecate children strike me as more playful and less intimidating and this man has a powerful man aura that you can’t ignore.

Saeyoung and Saeran

Oh my hacker boys!! They gave the hardest time from all characters (except Yoosung)

Since I can’t help but notice the similarities between Saeyoung and Leo I was about to put them as Hephaestus kids (Can you see Leo building a fire-spitting robot out of stress? Because I can) but in the end I decided for the god of communications (and internet )Hermes.

The personalities of Hermes kids are very wide… you can go from the Stoll brothers to Luke so there is no much to say in that field except that Saeyoungs sense of humor and Saeran’s sarcastic nature fit quite well. Also the search for freedom can be associated with the god of roads… and imagine Saeran’s face discovering he can get flying shoes… who I’m kidding, imagine both of them.

But what really sold me to this headcanon were the talents associated to Hermes’ children. According to Riordan wikia Children of Hermes abilities include: picking locks, high athletic ability, theft and trickery, persuasiveness, sensing traps, alchemy and potions (…Ray) , and money management (…Seven)… and you can bet the Choi twins have at least half of those talents each… I mean pretty useful for both Luciel and Unknown.

Jihyun

I said it already...this Little sunshine is a son of Apollo…I can fight you on this! My reasons are pretty obvious… creative, good at painting, photography, singing, bright personality; come on! He is a Sun! ...and I’m not referring to his relationship with Rika

Vanderwood

I was going to say Ares but hell no! This child is Roman all the way… a disciplined soldier, he tries to make sense to the ridiculous situation’s Seven gets him into, he is a child of Mars

Rika

Nemesis, she sees the world in black and white, good and bad. There are no gray fields for her… if she is wronged she has to take cards on the matter. She can be sweet but she cannot tolerate any injustice; unless is done by her on behalf of a “greater good”… So yeah, revenge suits her pretty well.

Yoosung

A difficult choice… he is kind of a wild card to me… I can see him as child of Zeus, Apollo, Hermes, Iris, Hypno, Hades, Hebe, Tyche but since I’m making Rika a child of Nemesis I think it would suit Yoosung as well…since they were like siblings but especially for his grudge against V. He can’t let go. To be honest his search for the true behind Rika’s death strikes me less as searching for the true and more for searching for somebody to take revenge on. He wants justice but as Rika, he sees it on a black and white matter.

#Mystic Messenger #MysMes #PJO #jihyun kim #rika kim #Yoosung kim #vanderwood #Saeyoung Choi #Saeran Choi #jumin han #hyun ryu #jaehee kang #Rima plays Mystic Messenger #Headcanon

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