rather points to a mere personification of reproductive powers. According to Plutarch the ancients “set Hermes by the side of Aphrodite,” i.e. the male and female principles of generation; and the two deities were worshipped together in Argos and elsewhere. But this phallic character does not explain other aspects of Hermes, as the messenger-god, the master-thief or the ideal Greek ephebe. It is impossible to adopt the view that the Homeric poets turned the rude shepherd-god of Arcadia into a messenger, in order to provide him with a place in the Olympian circle. To their Achaean audience Hermes must have been more than a phallic god. It is more probable that the Olympian Hermes represents the fusion of several distinct deities. Some scholars hold that the various functions of Hermes may have originated from the idea of good luck which is so closely bound up with his character. As a pastoral god he would give luck to the flocks and herds; when worshipped by townspeople, he would give luck to the merchant, the orator, the traveller and the athlete. But though the notion of luck plays an important part in early thought, it seems improbable that the primitive Greeks would have personified a mere abstraction. Another theory, which has much to commend it, has been advanced by Roscher, who sees in Hermes a wind-god. His strongest arguments are that the wind would easily develop into the messenger of the gods (Διὸς οὖρος), and that it was often thought to promote fertility in crops and cattle. Thus the two aspects of Hermes which seem most discordant are referred to a single origin. The Homeric epithet Ἀργειφόντης, which the Greeks interpreted as “the slayer of Argus,” inventing a myth to account for Argus, is explained as originally an epithet of the wind (ἀργεστής), which clears away the mists (ἀργός, φαίνω). The uncertainty of the wind might well suggest the trickery of a thief, and its whistling might contain the germ from which a god of music should be developed. But many of Roscher’s arguments are forced, and his method of interpretation is not altogether sound. For example, the last argument would equally apply to Apollo, and would lead to the improbable conclusion that Apollo was a wind-god. It must, in fact, be remembered that men make their gods after their own likeness; and, whatever his origin, Hermes in particular was endowed with many of the qualities and habits of the Greek race. If he was evolved from the wind, his character had become so anthropomorphic that the Greeks had practically lost the knowledge of his primitive significance; nor did Greek cult ever associate him with the wind.
The oldest form under which Hermes was represented was that of the Hermae mentioned above. Alcamenes, the rival or pupil of Pheidias, was the sculptor of a herm at Athens, a copy of which, dating from Roman times, was discovered at Pergamum in 1903. But side by side with the Hermae there grew up a more anthropomorphic conception of the god. In archaic art he was portrayed as a full-grown and bearded man, clothed in a long chiton, and often wearing a cap (κυνῆ) or a broad-brimmed hat (πέτασος), and winged boots. Sometimes he was represented in his pastoral character, as when he bears a sheep on his shoulders; at other times he appears as the messenger or herald of the gods with the κηρυκεῖον, or herald’s staff, which is his most frequent attribute. From the latter part of the 5th century his art-type was changed in conformity with the general development of Greek sculpture. He now became a nude and beardless youth, the type of the young athlete. In the 4th century this type was probably fixed by Praxiteles in his statue of Hermes at Olympia.
Authorities.—F. G. Welcker, Griech. Götterl. i. 342 f. (Göttingen, 1857–1863); L. Preller, ed. C. Robert, Griech. Mythologie, ii. 385 seq. (Berlin, 1894); W. H. Roscher, Lex. der griech. u. röm. Mythologie, s.v. (Leipzig, 1884–1886); A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, ii. 225 seq. (London, 1887); C. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dict. des ant. grecques et rom.; Farnell, Cults v. (1909); O. Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie u. Religionsgesch. p. 1318 seq. (Munich, 1906). In the article Greek Art, figs. 43 and 82 (Plate VI.) represent the Hermes of Praxiteles; fig. 57 (Plate II.), a professed copy of the Hermes of Alcamenes. (E. E. S.)
HERMES, GEORG (1775–1831), German Roman Catholic theologian, was born on the 22nd of April 1775, at Dreyerwalde, in Westphalia, and was educated at the gymnasium and university of Münster, in both of which institutions he afterwards taught. In 1820 he was appointed professor of theology at Bonn, where he died on the 26th of May 1831. Hermes had a devoted band of adherents, of whom the most notable was Peter Josef Elvenich (1796–1886), who became professor at Breslau in 1829, and in 1870 threw in his lot with the Old Catholic movement. His works were Untersuchungen über die innere Wahrheit des Christenthums (Münster, 1805), and Einleitung in die christkatholische Theologie, of which the first part, a philosophical introduction, was published in 1819, the second part, on positive theology, in 1829. The Einleitung was never completed. His Christkatholische Dogmatik was published, from his lectures, after his death by two of his students, Achterfeld and Braun (3 vols., 1831–1834).
The Einleitung is a remarkable work, both in itself and in its effect upon Catholic theology in Germany. Few works of modern times have excited a more keen and bitter controversy. Hermes himself was very largely under the influence of the Kantian and Fichtean ideas, and though in the philosophical portion of his Einleitung he criticizes both these thinkers severely, rejects their doctrine of the moral law as the sole guarantee for the existence of God, and condemns their restricted view of the possibility and nature of revelation, enough remained of purely speculative material to render his system obnoxious to his church. After his death, the contests between his followers and their opponents grew so bitter that the dispute was referred to the papal see. The judgment was adverse, and on the 25th of September 1835 a papal bull condemned both parts of the Einleitung and the first volume of the Dogmatik. Two months later the remaining volumes of the Dogmatik were likewise condemned. The controversy did not cease, and in 1845 a systematic attempt was made anonymously by F. X. Werner to examine and refute the Hermesian doctrines, as contrasted with the orthodox Catholic faith (Der Hermesianismus, 1845). In 1847 the condemnation of 1835 was confirmed by Pius IX.
See K. Werner, Geschichte der katholischen Theologie (1866), pp. 405 sqq.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS (“the thrice greatest Hermes”), an honorific designation of the Egyptian Hermes, i.e. Thoth (q.v.), the god of wisdom. In late hieroglyphic the name of Thoth often has the epithet “the twice very great,” sometimes “the thrice very great”; in the popular language (demotic) the corresponding epithet is “the five times very great,” found as early as the 3rd century B.C. Greek translations give ὁ μέγας καὶ μέγας and μέγιστος: τρίσμεγας occurs in a late magical text. ὁ τρισμέγιστος has not yet been found earlier than the 2nd century A.D., but there can now be no doubt of its origin in the above Egyptian epithets.
Thoth was “the scribe of the gods,” “Lord of divine words,” and to Hermes was attributed the authorship of all the strictly sacred books generally called by Greek authors Hermetic. These, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, our sole ancient authority (Strom. vi. p. 268 et seq.), were forty-two in number, and were subdivided into six divisions, of which the first, containing ten books, was in charge of the “prophet” and dealt with laws, deities and the education of priests; the second, consisting of the ten books of the stolistes, the official whose duty it was to dress and ornament the statues of the gods, treated of sacrifices and offerings, prayers, hymns, festive processions; the third, of the “hierogrammatist,” also in ten books, was called “hieroglyphics,” and was a repertory of cosmographical, geographical and topographical information; the four books of the “horoscopus” were devoted to astronomy and astrology; the two books of the “chanter” contained respectively a collection of songs in honour of the gods and a description of the royal life and its duties; while the sixth and last division, consisting of the six books of the “pastophorus,” was medical. Clemens’s statement cannot be contradicted. Works are extant in papyri and on temple walls, treating of geography, astronomy, ritual, myths, medicine, &c. It is probable that the native priests would have been ready to ascribe the authorship or inspiration, as well as the care and protection of all their books of sacred lore to Thoth, although
