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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 1067 of 1200

  • CHAPTER III - THE IDEAL OF HERMES

  • Lewis Richard Farnell
  • Book:
    The Cults of the Greek States
    Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    15 July 2010, pp 44-84
    First published in:
    1909

  • Summary

    As this god was so popular a figure of Greek polytheism and art, we are able to answer without difficulty the question before us now, under what forms was Hermes conceived by the Hellenic imagination from the first period onward? For the series of monuments is practically unbroken, from the uncouth aniconic or phallic emblem onwards and upwards, to the masterpiece of Greek sculpture that the fortune of our times has revealed to us.

    We may suppose that the Homeric world may have sometimes imagined him as a young and beautiful god: at least, when he walks among men, he is said to be ‘like to a youth, before the hair has grown on his cheek, whose young prime is then most lovely.’ But it was not till long after Homer that the artists came to represent him thus.

    Among the earliest iconic types may be quoted a very archaic bronze from Perugia of Hermes carrying the kerykeion, and wearing a peaked cap (P1. IX). With this we may compare one of the earliest monuments of Arcadia, a bronze statuette from Andritzena, in the Central Museum of Athens, a work of the sixth century, mentioned above as one of the earliest representations of Hermes the Ram-bearer (P1. X). The forms are powerful, though stunted, and present the sturdy type of the shepherd-athlete, combined, perhaps intentionally, with a hint in the countenance of the genial malice characteristic of the god.

  • CHAPTER II - CULT-MONUMENTS OF HERMES

  • Lewis Richard Farnell
  • Book:
    The Cults of the Greek States
    Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    15 July 2010, pp 32-43
    First published in:
    1909

  • Summary

    Being an eminently popular god of varied functions, Hermes becomes a frequent figure of Greek art in its various branches. But the surviving representations of him that can be shown to be derived from the public worship are not numerous. The records of the aniconic period, to which his earliest history goes back, have already been discussed, and they have given us reason to believe that such mere fetich-things as the phallos or the pile of stones by the wayside were once erected as his emblems or as objects in which he was immanent. But the monuments that have come down to us do not exemplify this earliest era of his cult, but rather the next, which was advancing towards eikonism; and we have many examples surviving of the ‘terminal’ type, the bearded head of Hermes above a four-square shaft, in the centre of which a phallos is carved, as the mark of his fertilizing power originally, but later also as an ‘apotropaion’ intended to ward off the evil eye. The same type may have occasionally occurred in other worships, such as those of Dionysos and Priapos; but in the absence of any special feature which prevents us, we may safely interpret these as Hermes-columns; and their association with this god is often made clearer still by the ‘kerykeion,’ or herald's-rod, carved up one of the sides of the shaft.

Page 1067 of 1200