Blog week 4 – Anthropomorphism: Depictions of Hermes

This week we were looking at anthropomorphism within Greek divinities.  It was interesting as this picture of the Herms was used.  This apparently shows a binary between anthropomorphism and it’s opposite. As the central part is of a stone column, and then the head and phallus is very human, with the beard and hair, with the phallus erect, which it normally was as James Davidson states in his book The Greeks and Greek Love (pp201).  He also says that they often had a thought for the day inscribe on them which was a very Athenian thing to do. We could not possibly imagine the Spartans, who were notoriously against long speeches and recording their thoughts with writing doing this.  I believe that these Herms are entirely an Athenian creation.  This comes from Thucydides, where he says (when the Herms were vandalised) that they were made in the local fashion (Thucydides 6.27).  Also Herodotus says that the Athenians learned the making of the Herms first from the Pelasgians, which they did with erect genitals (Herodotus 2.51.1).  It was more common for these markers for travellers were made using simple piles of stones, as noted by Hyde in his work already previously mentioned.  This means for me that the Herms in Athens was a beautification of the city, like the Parthenon, brought about due to the wealth and power of the Athenian Empire during the early and middle of the 5th century BC. 

We also discussed why we felt that the Greeks anthropomorphised their gods.  One uncomplicated reason for this is because the Greeks liked to track their heritage back to the gods. For example the Spartans believed that they were descended from Herakles, who is of course the son of Zeus himself.   Hermes himself had many offspring as he was greatly associated with the Nymphs, one of his most famous descendants was Odysseus.  From this list here we can see that Hermes had been linked too much more than just Ithaca and one of the greatest Tricksters of his time.   Pharis is a good example of the ancient Greeks tracing the lineage back to the gods; he founded the city Pharai in Messenia in southern Greece, here is a link for the rest of Hermes children, both mortal and Immortal.  This links back to the first blog post I made, where I said that the Greeks saw their culture as coming from divine origins, they also desired to see themselves as divine. 

Bibliography

Herodotus, ‘The Histories’, translated by Selincourt, A, Penguin books, 2003

Thucydides, ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’, Kindle Edition

Davidson, J, ‘The Greeks and Greek Love’, Phoenix, 2007