To a large extent, the cult of Hermes was conducted at the popular level, meaning that people used modes of worship other than standard city-sponsored sanctuaries and festivals. The fourth day of the month, mentioned as Hermes’ birthday in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (4.19), was the day to present offerings of food, often figs or small cakes, at neighborhood herms. Hermes was a “hungry” god, parodied in comedy as a food gobbler.3 His fondness for tasty food and drink is probably a reflection of his role as a provider of good things. Lucky finds and other unexpected goods were called hermaia, and Hermes sometimes had the epithet Tychon (Lucky). Prayers, inscriptions, and votive reliefs, many from the area around Athens, demonstrate that Hermes was grouped in worship with other gods believed to inhabit the surface of the earth and to exert an influence over the prosperity of herdsmen; “Hermes, Pan and the nymphs” was a common triad in prayers and dedications at rural shrines. Early poets agree that Hermes could aid in the multiplication of flocks. According to Homer (Il. 14.489-91, 16.18086), Hermes favored Phorbas, a Trojan rich in flocks (polumelos), and made him wealthy. On the Greek side, his affair with the aptly named Polymele resulted in a son Eudoros (Generous).
In popular belief, Hermes oversaw the operation of what we might call “poor man’s oracles,” those that could be consulted by people who lacked the wherewithal to travel to a major oracle and offer sacrifices there. Instead, they divined by casting knucklebones or other small objects and searching the resulting patterns for messages from the gods. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes (4.550-68) says that the youthful god desired to share the prestige that his brother Apollo derived from Delphi, but had to be satisfied with a lesser form of divination involving the observation of bees. Hermes did possess at least one proper oracle, at Phares in Achaia, but even this was an
Informal affair compared to the pomp of Delphi. In the market square at Phares stood a Hermes Agoraios (of the Marketplace) facing a hearth surrounded with lamps. In the time of Pausanias (7.22.2-3), whoever wished to consult the oracle entered the agora at dusk, burned incense on the hearth, lit the lamps, and placed a coin on the altar. Then, having whispered a question in the god’s ear, the petitioner covered his own ears so as to block out all sounds. Once out of the agora, he unstopped his ears and received as the oracle the first phrases he heard.
World History
