If, as seems likely from the Linear B tablets, Hermes had a Mycenaean predecessor, it is not surprising to find his cult vigorously maintained in mountainous Arkadia, one of the regions least affected by the upheavals at the close of the Bronze Age.1 For people who support themselves by herding sheep and goats, as most Arkadians did, maintaining boundaries and preventing the theft of one’s flocks (or thieving a neighbor’s flocks undetected) are of paramount importance. Panhellenic myth recognized Arkadia as the god’s birthplace, and his worship was unusually prominent in this land, where myth and cult tie him to mountain peaks, especially Kyllene. In a late stratum of Homer (Od. 24.1) and other Archaic poetry, he receives the epithet Kyllenios. No cave on Kyllene has been confirmed as a cultic counterpart of the one described in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, but Pausanias (8.17.1-2) speaks of a ruined temple on the mountain with a cult statue made of wood from a conifer. The people of neighboring Pheneos dedicated at Olympia a
Statue by the Aiginetan master Onatas (c. 500), which showed Hermes carrying a ram under his arm. Small Archaic bronzes of the same subject have been found in Arkadia, so it is probable that the Arkadians visualized him as a fellow herdsman. He was also an ancestor, having fathered the local heroes Evander, Myrtilos, and Aipytos, whose name means “of the heights.” Homer (II. 2.604) mentions the latter’s tomb near Kyllene, while a temple of Hermes Aipytos stood at Tegea. The relationship between god and the hero whose name he adopts parallels that between Poseidon and Erechtheus at Athens. Another Archaic cult of Hermes was centered on the hill and town Akakesion, which were etymologically related to the god’s Homeric epithet akaketa, “doing no wrong” or “benevolent.” With the synoecism of Megalopolis c. 365, the most venerable Parrhasian cults, including that of Hermes Akakesios, were moved to the new city.2
World History
