The Ancients - Hermes: Messenger of the Gods

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Famed as the herald of the Greek gods, Hermes is the ‘jack of all trades’ when it comes to the pantheon of Mount Olympus. Known for his trademark winged sandals and snake encircled sceptre, he is the god of both thieves and shepherds. But how did he earn those titles?In this episode of the Ancients, Tristan Hughes continues our Gods and Goddesses series with Christopher Bungard to chat all things Hermes   and answer the most important of questions - how did his sandals grow wings? Senior Producer: Elena Guthrie. Assistant Producer: Joseph Knight. Editor: Aidan Lonergan. Script Writer: Andrew Hulse. Voice Actor: Lucy DavidsonOther episodes in this series include: Zeus, Hera, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, King Midas, Achilles, Poseidon, Medusa, Hades, Persephone, and Demeter.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Sing, muses. Sing to me a story of Olympus and the deathless gods who govern earth, sea, and sky. So the young thief asks as he hides in the long grass beneath a poacher's moon. This is his first cattle raid, and so his brother has given him just one task.

Keep watch on the farmhouse. But still, the young thief fidgets. His fingers twitch and stretch. He plays with the pendant about his neck, the one his brother whittled for him. Two snakes twined about a wand. It is the symbol of a god. It will bring you luck. That's what his brother promised as he tied the pendant about the young thief's neck. Then he was gone, stealing into the night to break into the pastures.

But what god would bring luck to thieves? It is the muses that come to answer his question. That breeze rushing through the long grass, it is their singing, their dancing, their playing of the lyre and the flute. Who would bring a young thief luck, they whisper. None other than the patron of thieves, Hermes, messenger of the gods. of the gods, but also god of thieves, tricksters, travellers and more.

He has a great story, certainly one of the most fun in this pretty bizarre pantheon of deities. From stealing his fellow god Apollo's cattle when just a day old, to slaying a legendary giant called Argus who saw everything with his a hundred eyes. Now, with all the episodes in this Greek Gods and Goddesses series, we're starting this one off with a story, a retelling of a myth associated with Hermes, just as the ancient Greeks would have told these stories to each other around campfires thousands of years ago. Today's story is Hermes' mission to steal a heifer, a young female cow yet to bore offspring, guarded by the giant Argus. Now this was no ordinary heifer, but a princess called Io, whom Hera, queen of the gods,

had transformed after Zeus, the king of the gods, took a liking to her. If Hermes was to succeed, he'd have to use all the thieving tools at his disposal to successfully steal Io the Heifer from under Argus's gaze. It is quite the story. Following that, we have an interview with Professor Christopher Bungard, a classicist from The Ohio State University, to explore more into Hermes' story. I really do hope you enjoy, and let's get into the fascinating myth of Hermes, Argus, and Io the Heifer. The Muses start their song with a familiar motif, Zeus' infidelity. The father of gods and men has caught sight of a young girl, Fair Ayo, daydreaming on temple steps. Her mother is an oceanid, a sea nymph, and Ayo has inherited that divine beauty.

Her eyes share the twinkle of sunlight catching on a cresting wave Her fingers are the warmth of Mediterranean sands When Zeus takes her into his embrace Io believes their love will be like the marriage of sea and coast The endlessness of waves kissing the shoreline. She is wrong. For Io is not merely a princess, but a priestess of Hera, and so the insult to the queen of the gods is twofold, not merely adultery, but apostasy. Hera contrives a fitting punishment. She causes the young girl to shift, to bend,

to warp her form like quicksilver, till those fingers close into hooves, and those eyes stain to a depthless black. Io is a maiden no longer, but a white heather. A lifetime as Hera's sacred animal, That will teach the princess devotion. Of course, Io's new form does little to dampen Zeus's desires. Just as the heifer is to Hera, so the bull is to the father of gods and men. He has spent many days prowling field and dale as a bullock, great ivory horns bent into the hint of a crown. But there is a complication. Hera has put Io out to pasture in her sacred fields and placed the sanctuary under the guard of Argus the Giant.

The Queen of the Gods has found herself a rancher. Zeus must find himself a rustler. A rustler. Hermes, messenger of the gods, is never still. Even standing to attention upon the bronze-floored hall of Olympus, he continues to fidget. The wings upon his sandals twitch and stretch. Others, be they deathless or mortal, they're slow to move, slow to think, slow to explain. Zeus has barely even made it past his justifications of adultery before Hermes understands the heist, is already planning the heist. The exits, the entrances, the getaway and timings, and of course, the score. This is not Hermes' first cattle raid.

He was still in swaddling clothes when he slipped into the pastures of Apollo and relieved the archer god of his sacred oxen. What is it that makes him so natural a thief? Exactly what makes him so talented a messenger? Distance is meaningless to Hermes. talented a messenger. Distance is meaningless to Hermes. Rolling fields, towering peaks, they pleat like fabric beneath the god's feet, till his journeys are little more than a single step. It is the same for every threshold. He passes through doors by widening a keyhole like a plucked stitch. He ignores fences by stretching the gaps between posts like threadbare cloth. Here a sanctuary might as well be an open meadow. But breaking in is only half the task. Even under a poacher's moon, there is no hiding from her rancher.

Argus's eyes see everything. A thousand of them like the spots on a bird's cape. Ever peering, ever glancing, ever staring. His sight is perfect, his vision panoramic, his watch endless. When the giant blinks, it is never all at once, but like a great wave that rolls from head to toe. Not even Hermes could steal under such scrutiny. So, the god must turn to the next of his thieves' tools. Music. When Apollo finally tracked Hermes down for the theft of his oxen, the only way the messenger of the gods could mollify the archer was with music.

The first notes of the tortoiseshell lyre that would become Apollo's hallmark. With Argus, it is the panpipes. The giant's eyes may be infallible, but his ears are easily charmed. As soon as Hermes brings the pipes to his lips, Argus's lumbering charge begins to slow. His pupils go wide, his gazes lose focus, and Hermes lulls him to sleep. Great snores fill Hera's sanctuary like rolling thunder. But even in slumber, Argus remains at guard. His eyes remain open, the night sky reflected in a thousand beads of glass. And when Hermes takes a step, when he reaches out a hand to take Io's bridle, not even the soft spell of the panpipes is enough to contain the giant. Argus charges once again, and his roar is a thunderclap, sound enough to shatter stone.

Hermes has no choice then. He must turn to the last of his thieves' tools. The slingshot slides into his hands all by itself, a stone heavy in its pouch. The muses bring their song to a close with the heavy crash of Argus's death. But the young thief hears another sound, barking, and then a scream. A guard dog has found his brother out there in the night. And now there is shouting from the farmhouse too. The door swings open. The farmer, silhouetted by firelight.

A blade glints in his hands. The young thief does not have Hermes' talents. He cannot charm with music. He cannot pleat distance till his journeys are little more than a single step. But he does have a slingshot. It slides into his hands all by itself. A stone heavy in its pouch. Christopher, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today.

Thanks for having me. You're more than welcome as we continue our Greek Gods and Goddesses series. And now the turn of Hermes. He's quite a fun god, isn't he, Hermes? Oh, he's one of my favorite, most definitely. I think that a lot of times he kind of comes into contact, you know, through Apollo. You get Apollo and Hermes stories. And I think his brothers, they're great diametrically opposed kinds of brothers representing very different kinds of ways of thinking about the world and ways of being in the world. And of course, you know, sort of, I think as a favourite son of Zeus, whenever he's on his

capers, Hermes has always seemed to be the go-to right-hand man for Zeus, so to speak. A favourite son of Zeus. Not bad, eh, for a god in the Greek pantheon. But no such thing as a silly question. Christopher, who exactly is Hermes? So I think it's worth it starting kind of with his origin, right? We want to keep in mind that he's the son of Zeus and one of the Pleiades, Maya, the oldest of the Pleiades. And we learned from the Homeric hymn to Hermes that his birth had to be kept a secret, of course, to avoid the wrath of Zeus's wife Hera.

And so he is born in a mountainous region in the middle of the Peloponnesus on Mount Chilene, which is sort of one of the major sanctuaries for Hermes in the ancient world. He is the jack of all trades when it comes to the gods, right? If you list his main areas of influence, right? You see him in all sorts of things that seem disconnected. He's the god of merchants and traders and boundaries and thieves and shepherds and heralds and messengers. He's a trickster god. I mean, he's sort of the grab bag of the gods, right? I mean, like whatever, I guess, didn't get allotted to somebody else, maybe Hermes can pick it up in some ways, it seems. A very transitional kind of god. And I think that kind of his more rural origins, you know, maybe connected to a bit of that sort of living on the margins, you know,

sort of occupying spaces at the edges of human and divine activity. Christopher, you mentioned that his mother was a member of the Pleiades. I mean, what are the Pleiades? What do you mean by that? Yeah, they're a group of nymphs. We may know them as sort of one of the constellations, right? These lesser divinities that we see, couplings of various, you know, titans and other figures out there in the world, or, you know, sort of Olympians and other figures. Yeah. Fair enough indeed. I mean, you've kind of hinted at there, the Homeric Olympians and other figures. Yeah. Fair enough indeed. You've hinted at the Homeric hymns to Hermes, which we'll explore in more depth as the episode goes on. But one key thing on that before we move on, it's

quite an interesting place for his origin story if it's set in the Peloponnese, in that kind of mountainous area. This isn't Athens, this isn't the fertile river valleys, this is difficult terrain. He's built up there right in the center of the Peloponnese in southern Greece. Yeah, from what scholars have managed to gather, you know, it seems to be that Hermes is one of the older gods that we can trace back historically, right? We can find his name sort of going back to linear B tablets, right? Mycenaean Greek, you know, sort of culture. And of course, right, a lot of the important sort of cultural centers for Mycenaean culture, they're centered around the Peloponnesus, right? And so I think there is something to be said about this earlier period of Greek history, and maybe a more rural and more agrarian bit of Greece than the Greece that we're typically thinking of, you know,

either through the Mycenaean palace cultures, or whether, you know, later, as we start to think about sort of the development of the poleis around the Greek mainland. Let's kind of focus in on Hermes' character a bit more. I mean, first of all, talking about his attributes and his symbols that define him. Let's talk about the attributes first. I mean, Christopher, what would you say are the main attributes of Hermes as a deity? Right. I mean, I think the symbols that we typically associate with him, definitely one, the caduceus, the wand that has the twin snakes kind of circling around it and the wings at the top, you know, that we see as the symbol of heralds and messengers again and again. There's different versions of kind of where this symbol originates, right? We hear reference to it

actually in the Homeric to him, to Hermes, which we'll talk about more later on, as a gift from Apollo to kind of cement their friendship as the two sort of ultimately reunite and resolve their differences at the end of the story. There's possibility that this symbol kind of has more larger cultural interactions between cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean. We do see these serpents entwining a staff in the worship of Sumerian deities. So it could be that it is a symbol that's kind of borrowed over time, but it is definitely a symbol that has a long longevity. And maybe we'll talk about the caduceus a little bit more when we talk about Hermes' afterlife after the ancient world. Connected with his kind of role as a messenger and moving quickly between places, of course, there's the famous winged sandals. I'm from the Akron area originally. And of course, the Goodyear Tire Company happily adopted Hermes

winged sandals as one of their key symbols for their company. But we see references in a variety of ancient sources to those sandals and his ability to travel quickly between all sorts of realms, both from Olympus up in the heavenly realm to the earthly realm. But of course, he also serves as a guide to the underworld, right? And so we see him transitioning between all sorts of levels. And that's one of the things that makes, you know, Hermes quite interesting. I think also as part of that image of him as a traveler, that sort of round hat, the patasus that we see again and again in the imagery that we see associated with Hermes. Again, sort of a hat to keep the sun and the rain off as you're traveling, you know, in a world before, you know, so traveling by cars and trains and buses and whatnot, right, in which you needed this sort

of protection for the weather, right? It serves a very functional purpose, I think, that we often overlook. But of course, one that would make sense for ancient people who are used to long-distance sort of land travel, you know, that you need to dress appropriately for the trip. And that, you know, you would see travelers wearing, you know, sort of broad brimmed hats to keep the sun off their, their shoulders and their necks, right? And you see that with Hermes. Another symbol that is associated with Hermes, though, I don't think it's necessarily an attribute, but it may also be part of the origin of his name, is these things, the herms. Now the herms are these kind of

square pillars, and the top of the pillar then would have a depiction of the god's head. And then they also had an epiphalic, you know, sort of projection coming off the front of them. And in fact, Hermes' name may be connected to an older Greek word for essentially like a pile of stones, right, some sort of border markers. And so, I mean, there again, we see, you know, part of traveling is also negotiating boundaries. I think what holds together a lot of these different, you know, qualities that we see in Hermes are these people who are kind of at the boundaries of communities and traveling between and connecting different communities and negotiating between different spaces. It's so interesting, as you highlighted at the start, this kind of jack-of-all-trades portrayal of Hermes. It almost seems like everyone's portrayal of Hermes might be quite different. I immediately think of Hermes as messenger of the gods, but as

you say, others would see him primarily as the traveller and helping with people on their journeys. Is his speed one, though, of his defining qualities? Because he almost feels, from an outsider looking in, having studied Greek myths when I was very young, that this guy is almost the Bugatti Veyron of the Greek gods and goddesses in just how fast he can get to places across the world. I mean, this is one of those interesting things about thinking about myths. Obviously, I have to not try to tie the gods to actual human physics, right? You have to suspend your disbelief in a little bit. There's another messenger, a deity Iris, right? The goddess of the rainbow. We often see it in a messenger kind of capacity as well. But if Zeus needs to send a message, it's usually Hermes that seems to be his trusted messenger, especially when he's trying to send messages

to mortal men in the world. Do we know how Hermes gains this role as being Zeus' right-hand man, as becoming the messenger of the gods. One of the things that we do here is the hymn to Hermes as the narrator is kind of wrapping up the story and is talking about the various attributes that Zeus, you know, sort of then conveys upon his son who he has recognized. And we could talk more about that kind of process of Hermes being recognized as a god when we talk about the Homeric hymn to Hermes. But one of the things that happens actually at the end of that hymn is Zeus commands Hermes specifically to be a messenger to Hades, right? Essentially in that role of conveying souls from the land of the living to the dead. And it could be by extension

of that role as the psychopompous, right? As the sort of leader of souls that Hermes gets extended in other messenger capacities. We want to think about heralds, too, right, kind of in the world of Homer. Remember that heralds are not the kings, right? They are messengers of the kings. They're sort of a step below. And I think it makes sense, then, that Hermes, as a son of Zeus, right, as a younger generation figure, you know, becomes sort of the mouthpiece for the greater empowered Zeus, who is, you know, the head. I mean, in the same way that, you know, Agamemnon and Menelaus and Odysseus and Diomedes and all these figures want to imagine in their human greatness that

they are Zeus-like, right? It makes sense then that if they have heralds that are sort of a step below, but also quite respected, you know, that the divine Olympians, you know, are going to have a similar structure where you have got the king of the Olympians. And of course, he has sort of a figure of lesser authority who still has authority in his son as Hermes. And maybe that's another way to think about how Hermes develops, you know, this job as part of his repertoire. Let's then focus in on this great story around Hermes' origins. Take it away. What is this hymn which goes into detail about the early stages of Hermes's story? It's a great story. I mean, the Homeric hymns in general are these older poems.

They were associated in antiquity with the great name of Homer, right? Sort of potentially he's like descendants of Homer. Does that mean actual biological children? Does that mean sort of people who've carried on the trade? I mean, there's scholarly discussion and debate about that, right? But there are these older poems that mimic and imitate the sort of poetic style of Homer, hence why we call them the Homeric hymns. Now, the Homeric hymn to Hermes is quite interesting for a variety of reasons, right? Each of these hymns kind of celebrates one of the Olympian gods in some capacity. And the Homeric hymn to Hermes starts with Hermes' birth there on Mount Kilene, out in the remote wilderness of the Peloponnesus, in this very isolated area. Maya gives birth to a young baby, and a very precocious baby at that.

On his very first day, he is born, and he immediately kind of breaks free of his swaddling straps. He cannot be contained. He exits the cave that his mother lives in. He sees this tortoise minding its own business, ambling along on the mountainside. And he looks at this tortoise and he immediately greets this tortoise with great joy and says, you know, what a lucky find, a Hermione actually, that echo of his own name, right? And immediately starts talking about this tortoise as if it is a liar. And what he proceeds to do is he proceeds to dispatch the tortoise, right? He kills the tortoise, and then he turns it into the resonating chamber of the liar, right? Now, of course, the liar is an instrument that we do not normally associate with Hermes, but rather with Apollo. But we'll get there in that part of the story eventually, because, of course, these brothers

are going to need to exchange gifts. Now, Hermes, of course, wants to make a name for himself, right? He is a son of Zeus, but he has been born into extreme obscurity. So now he needs to get attention from the Olympian community. And so what he decides to do is he sees his half-brother Apollo's cattle and he decides those sound like a great thing for me to have. And he quickly rustles Apollo's cattle away. Now, because he's a bit of a trickster, because he's quite clever, he turns them around and essentially, you know, has them walk backwards and thus disguising kind of the path that the

cattle have taken and thus making it harder for Apollo to find his cattle. So Apollo looks down, he notices his cattle are gone. Immediately he does what any good rancher would do and tries to figure out where his livestock have gone. He ultimately traces these cattle back to Hermes and he confronts his younger brother, right? Essentially like you've stolen my cows, the audacity of you and Hermes immediately. And this is one of my favorite thing about the Homeric you. And Hermes immediately, and this is one of my favorite thing about the Homeric hymn to Hermes, he essentially like leans heavily into the fact that he is a baby. The Homeric hymn to Hermes is wonderful because it's full of humor. A lot of the other hymns are very serious, right? As you're talking about serious gods like Apollo, but the

hymn to Hermes, because you're talking about a trickster is full of all sorts of silliness. And the young God essentially is like a baby i could not possibly steal cat i'm just a baby i was born yesterday you know and apollo sort of is like all right like i'm gonna take you to zeus and he's gonna sort this all out right so apollo hauls hermes off to mount olympus you know and essentially says to his dad like look this little kid stole my cattle i can't believe it right this is ridiculous what are you gonna do about Then Hermes' response, and it's a bold-faced lie, is essentially like, I'm a baby. I don't know what cows are. I'm just a baby, right? And Zeus finds this hilarious. He has a good laugh, right? He knows Hermes is lying. I would say that he also knows that Hermes is not actually trying

to trick him, but rather that Hermes is trying to do something different. There's actually a little bit of, if you look carefully at the language, there's potentially some really interesting language stuff that's going on with different forms of knowing. So in Greek, there's this verb, idain, oida, I know, but that's connected to seeing, right? So oida is a kind of knowing that says, I know it because I have seen it. I have been able to kind of process it, put it into its right category. And if you kind of follow the language that Apollo uses throughout the Homeric Hinder Hermes, there's a lot of emphasis on this seeing kind of knowledge, this knowledge based on the way that the past has been. And it makes sense because Apollo is very much a god of order, right? I mean, if you need, you know, sort of to

impose order, if you need to impose the rules, you know, Apollo is a good god to lean towards to impose rules, right? Now, Hermes is a newcomer. And a lot of what he talks about is he talks about Noane, Noas, the mind, like, I've looked at this thing, but it isn't simply a kind of knowledge that is to say, I know what this thing has been, but it is to say, like, I know what it is now, but I also know what it could be. So we can think about that tortoise again, right? He looked at this tortoise and said, I see you. I know who you are, but I also can see you as a tortoise, as a living animal, but I also can see you as the resonating chamber of a liar. And both of those things are true about a tortoise, but at the same time for a figure like Hermes,

right? And I think that a little bit of what Hermmes does is to say i know the way that the world can be and that it needs to have some flexibility it can't just be simply like put into nice neat boxes if everything's already been sorted there's no room for hermes as a god because all the roles have already been aligned right they've already been allotted so hermes as a newcomer is making a claim for like maybe there's space for for some new things from new ways. And so to go back to our story, Zeus laughs when his, you know, young precocious son lies bold-facedly about, you know, not stealing the cattle. He essentially like just tries to dissolve the whole situation by not, neither confirming nor denying the lie. He's just like, all right, all right, here's the deal. I want the two of you to go and be friends. Hermes, give the cattle back, right? Apollo, you be friends with

Hermes and you guys will be great brothers together. You're kind of moving forward. And then Zeus gives him various, you know, sort of prerogatives as a god, right? Sort of to be the messenger to the underworld. And then it's at this point in the story, they go back, they, you know, sort of come back to the cattle. In this story, actually, there's also some indication that Hermes is the inventor of sacrifices, because in fact, Hermes slaughtered a couple of Apollo's cattle and, you know, sort of burned the parts of the meat that you would burn as part of a Greek sacrifice, because of course, the gods really enjoy the smells of sacrifice. They don't eat, but they enjoy the smells. But there's something about Hermes that is kind of more close to us as humans than other gods, right? So it makes sense that he was

interested in this process. So then they exchange gifts, right? Apollo gives Hermes the caduceus as a messenger, right? This is your symbol. And Apollo then gives his brother the lyre, which becomes the great symbol of Apollo the musician. And then they go on their happy way. But Apollo also grants Hermes access to a sort of lesser form of divinity that has to do with these maidens who eat honey. And that if they're in the right mood, then they tell the truth. And if they're disturbed, then they tell lies. There's a whole big business about this mad honey thing that comes up in other sources that I'm not an expert in, but other people definitely are. And then they resolve themselves and they're good friends, you know, from then on out. And we see this friendship kind of crop up periodically, you know, in the story in which

Hephaestus has caught Ares and Aphrodite together. There's this nod, a very brotherly, sort of camaraderie that develops between Hermes and Apollo. And I think they're nicely complementary, right? I mean, to go back to those kind of forms of knowledge again right you know the apollo form of knowledge which has a lot to do with sort of order and everything in its box and sort of categorizing things right and hermes with this capacity for looking at the world and saying it's nice that there's boxes but they don't have to just be in the boxes right we can rearrange the boxes we can reimagine we can reconfigure these boxes as well. And the last thing I would say here too, is that reconfiguring though, isn't simply destructive, right? I mean, it's possible

that some of this boundary crossing that Hermes gets associated with, and this trickster quality that Hermes gets associated with thieves, among other things, right? Could become quite destructive. A lot of the stories of Dionysus, for example, have to do with this kind of destructive, dangerous quality, the sort of spragmos of his followers of just ripping things to shreds, right? Hermes is not that kind of boundary crossing, right? It's sort of more of pushing the envelope. Where are the limits?

While still kind of staying nice and neatly in Zeus's grand vision and Zeus's grand plan for things but also saying like okay maybe sometimes as times and situations develop maybe rethink the plan a little bit or like be able to play with the edges a little bit so yeah so that's the way i think about hermes and a lot of it comes out of the thinking i've done reading the homeric hymn to hermes which is by far the funniest of the homeric hyns. He belches, he farts, he's a little baby stealing cows. I mean, he has a riotous good time playing music and having a good time. I mean, Christopher, that is an absolutely amazing story.

I completely love it. And it's just fascinating. He said, okay, I didn't steal cattle. I'm a one-day-year-old baby. I don't even know what a cow is. And then going off to the head of the gods to fight his corner. He almost kind of gives off mischievous youngest brother vibes too is kind of what i got from that it's a brilliant story he does you know but interestingly in that mischievous younger brother story the artwork

connected to hermes is really fascinating when we look at the depiction of gods and greek art often is very iconographically driven and so beards are inevitably a sign of sort of older, fully adult males. Young men, they're inevitably portrayed as unbearded, right? Sort of clean shaven. And when you look at depictions of Apollo, pretty uniformly, Apollo is depicted as a young god, right? Sort of as an unshaven young god. Hermes is interesting, again, in sort of this boundary crossing and this traveling. Sometimes we get this sort of young version of Hermes and he's unbearded. But then at other times, we get these bearded older adult male Hermes, right? And so we kind of get Hermes in both veins. But again, I think it speaks to this kind of crossing of

boundaries, this navigating between different stages in life, you know, whether that's sort of stages in time or sort of different places in location. And of course, a lot of ancient languages, you know, sort of use the same words for place and time, right? That they're in some ways connected in a way that maybe in English, we don't always think about the connections between space and time as being somehow analogous to each other. But I think that the ancients kind of understood those things as connected in some ways. And we see that with Hermes again and again. You did mention there the crossing of boundaries. Now, before we explore his relationship to thieves and that trickster vibe part of Hermes' story, of course, let's focus a bit more on him being

able to kind of cross this physical boundary between the overworld, the land of the living, and the land of the dead. Because what is this? It seems this is quite special that Hermes has this access. I think that on one level, there's a rigid boundary, right? There's the land of the dead because what is this it seems this is quite special that hermes has this access i think that on one level like there's a rigid boundary right there's the land of the living and the land of the dead and right so once you cross over you cannot come back only a select few mortals right are able to kind of go into the land of the dead and and somehow come back and often with the aid of the gods there's a greek pot that has hermes and heracles and cerberus and there he is, you know, sort of helping Heracles, this mortal who has had to go down to the underworld as part of one of his tasks and helping lead him back again and again. In fact, in the story of Persephone,

when Zeus has to send a message to his brother to essentially say, hey, you've got to give up your wife for part of the year and return her to her mother. Of course, who does Zeus ask to like facilitate that process it's hermes right he says hermes i need you to go down to hades and i need you to tell persephone right that she can come back and live with her mother for part of the year and then of course going back down and i think again it has to do again and again with that that sense of being a god at the margins being a god at the boundaries mean, the funny thing about boundaries is we often think of them as a dividing line that separates two spaces.

But the very existence of that boundary line, by its very nature, suggests that those two spaces are very intimately connected. As much as we might want to, like, sort of be able to separate them and say they are separate, the fact that they share a boundary means there is some connection there. There is some possibility of movement between the two and then you need something that helps you kind of process and and negotiate that movement between these spaces that

you think of and for good reasons you might want those spaces to be connected right i mean we don't necessarily want the dead coming back and haunting us all the time we want them to have a nice dividing line. But naturally, we need to be able to kind of move things from the overworld to the underworld. Otherwise, we'd be too crowded with people up here after all. Was it therefore in the ancient Greek belief that once you died, before you got to the Rhythm of Styx and so on and so forth, that in your soul form, that you would see Hermes there with his caduceus, that symbol he's been given by Apollo, and he would be their guide to the underworld.

That was one of his roles. When we're dealing with mythology, it's not as if there's a monolithic book of the way Greeks think. We want to keep in mind that the ancient Greeks were a smattering of different communities that said, we speak a similar language, and we have similar religious festivals. And on occasion, we come together for these pan-Hellenic events, right? But that they also kind of were all doing their own thing at the same time, right? Sort of the way that you worship Hermes in Athens might be a bit different than the way that the people in Arcadia worship Hermes. And that's the reason why we see these various epithets, the local variation on this story. And of course, you know, it makes sense that if you coming from Athens and me from Arcadia are telling stories, you know, maybe I'm a merchant

and I'm bringing, you know, goods to Athens and I'm telling stories, maybe you hear certain similarities and you're like, oh, that makes sense. That seems in concert with my understanding of the way this Hermes character works, right? Maybe you incorporate some of my Arcadian stories into your version mentally of Hermes, because of course, with any religious, you know, kind of moment, right? Kind of how verifiably tangibly do we know that these things really are exactly the way that they are? Greek mythology naturally as an oral tradition, as a storytelling tradition, right? Does not necessarily tend toward the one orthodoxically correct version of things but rather has a lot of capacity for different wrinkles different stories and i imagine that

some greeks probably imagine like this is what happens right is that hermes comes to you and sort of helps lead and guide your soul to the underworld others probably imagine that transition in different kinds of ways too let's talk about about Hermes as the trickster. How does this lead, Christopher, therefore into him having this association with thieves? Isn't it a good trickster, right? You know, you don't accept the world as it is. I mean, I think like when you look across mythologies, across the world, across cultures, this idea of trickster that we see in Native American stories here in North America. We could see the stories of monkey in the Chinese traditions, plenty of other places

along the way that have these trickster figures. They are figures that don't accept the world simply as it is, right? That they are often on the borders, they're often on the margins. And it makes sense. I mean, sort of when we want to think about thieves, right? I mean, sort of, why does one steal? Why be a professional thief? There's something about the society that exists that doesn't have space for you. Maybe you've been marginalized, maybe you've been pushed out of the community. You know, I think in terms of thieving, one of the popular images of thievery that we see in the ancient Mediterranean stories is, especially with livestock, cattle rustling. And in fact, there seemed to be some suggestion of, like, you know, there were initiation r rights, transitions from youth to adulthood in various communities in which like, you know,

cattle rustling was like one of the things like you and your band of fellow teenagers would go try to steal without getting caught, you know, like somebody's livestock. And that was part of the games, you know, of proving yourself as a properly adult, you know, male and whatnot. And naturally sort of Hermes becomes then a bit of your patron in those moments, a God unwilling to sort of accept the world as it is. I mean, there is something very material about Hermes compared to the other gods. Naturally, I mean, there's something very material about thievery, very tangible, very sort of of the world. And I think that that marginalized character of it is an important part of his status as an outsider tricksters are often the outsider right and they're negotiating kind of their relationship to those in the center and i think

that that's a little bit of what i would say there about hermes the trickster but also hermes the thief just because it yours doesn't mean it should be yours just because it's yours now doesn't mean it will always be yours that reminder that things are in flux that we see again and again with Hermes you know to try to tie together these various capacities of his and I mostly work in Roman comedy so I'm thinking about things from the Roman side the image of shepherds as also sometimes turning to essentially brigandage as a way to kind of make ends meet it makes sense that sort of these are people living very rough lives I mean they're out there with their animals on the mountainsides, right? Exposed to the elements. They're having to defend their animals from wolves or other predatory animals. They're used to a good scrap. And so I think that

there may be some sort of spillover between sort of Hermes as the god of shepherd, but also sort of then as one who has to defend his flock flock but also like on occasion raid somebody else's flocks to acquire more right i mean it is a fairly cutthroat world that's another thing so he's also the god of shepherds as well in the mercury i'm guessing the roman equivalent of hermes is that another of the roles that they are the gods of shepherds and that they are looking after those people who are in turn looking after the livestock that some people will try and steal right right right and of course i mean there is that double edged thing, right? Sort of, we see this with thoughts about ancient medicine. Pharmacon in Greek is both medicine and poison, right? That if I have the knowledge

to protect, I have the inverse knowledge to do harm in the way that I'm protecting against. So if I have the knowledge to protect, you know, my flocks, then I also have the knowledge to steal from other people's flocks it's sort of two sides of the same coin thing but again the trickster right i mean sort of is the one that is able to take the coin and say it's not just this it's this right i mean like these things are connected they're not separate they are one in the same right they are the same coin even if we look at it from each side i could protect my my flocks, but I could also steal somebody else's because of course I have to have both sets of knowledge to do the one well, right? To protect

my flock, I do have to be able to think about what people might want to do to steal my flock. Before we go and wrap up with the legacy, are there any great parts that you find fascinating you want to highlight before we move on? No, sure. I mean, the last story that I think a lot of people might know is of course, Hermes is theayer of argos the monster you know with eyes all over his body you know sort of ever watchful who comes into the story of io right when zeus is trying to hide one of his love affairs from his wife and of course you know there's hermes again helping his dad kind of work around things zeus finds you know sort of his lover kind of trapped being watched by this watchman who who never sleeps right so he has hundreds of eyes all over his body and of course it's Hermes who gets

dispatched to go sort of deal with the situation and what he does is he essentially kind of uses magical charms and spells and he sings a song to lull the eyes of Argos asleep and once all the eyes have fallen asleep he kills Argos and thus you know free Zeus's lover from being watched but of course it's argos then that hera then takes the eyes and puts it in the tail of the peacock all those little like emblems that you see in male peacocks right but again i think there's that access to magic that can be used for good and used for harm and that's another thing about tricksters right is i think we enjoy the ways that they play with the world but there's also this sort of

potentially unnerving undercurrent to that right sort of if i can play with the world you might like it as long as i play with the world in the ways that you want me to but there's always the danger that i could turn on you but usually hermes ends up as the fun-loving you know version of that not the monstrous version of that part of the story but yeah hermes is slayer of argos i mean and that's an epithet that we hear kind of referenced to quite frequently. So clearly that's a story that ancient Greeks were interested in as part of Hermes' legacy. You hinted earlier that kind of those adolescence festivals when a young person was going from childhood to adulthood and becoming an adult and, you know, kind of that thieving of cattle. And

obviously that seems to be a link back to the Homeric hymn to Hermes. Are those the sorts of festivals that ancient Greeks could and sometimes would associate with Hermes? And he is seen as being an important deity with that, taking that next step from transforming from a young adult into an adult male. I think that that's an important part of his aspects too, right? To tie it back into our discussion about sort of the portrayals of Hermes, sometimes as an unbearded youth. We see this, especially in statues, that we see a lot of statues of the young Hermes, right? Without a beard, he's got his caduceus, he's got his round, you know, ptosis, his traveler hat on, he's got his winged sandals, right? You know, but then we also see in vase paintings a lot, sort of the bearded Hermes. And I think that is, you know, a crucial transitional point in the ancient world. When do you no longer kind of do the things of youth? When

do you become a fully fledged member of the community with all the rights and privileges that come with being a male of this community? And we want to keep in mind that a lot of Greek communities are very gender normative, right? There are clear expectations for you based on your gender and kind of what are the clear expectations for you based on your gender and kind of what are the proper roles for you as you move kind of from various phases of life. And a lot of times as kids, you know, in a lot of cultures, there's not a strong sort of differentiation between young boys and young girls. I mean, they're just kids, right? In fact, the Greek word for kids is neuter. It's neither male nor female. They're just not adults, I guess,

is a way to think about it, right? And then you have to then, if you're going to live in a world that has very gendered expectations, then you have to take these sort of amalgamated youth and you need to start to transition them into, as you move toward adulthood, here are the expectations for you. And so having sort of rituals, having festivals that help people understand what that transition is, what those expectations are, is probably essential for life as adults and moving from life as a child in various Greek communities. How influential is Hermes on later cultures, whether that be the Romans or even down to the present day?

Sure, right. I mean, Mercury is a figure that the Romans have you know, sort of have of their own, but they associate with Hermes. Mercury, when he transitions into a Roman world, right, becomes a lot more associated with merchants, hence the M-E-R-C part of both of those words, and trade and those kinds of things, especially as the world becomes maybe a little bit less agrarian and a little bit more production-based and exchange-based. We definitely see that.

Moving out of antiquity, Hermes became sort of the god that alchemists in, you know, sort of later periods associated with their work. And because of the work of alchemists in developing various, you know, compounds and whatnot, and early medicines, this is one of the reasons why you see the caduceus actually as a symbol in a lot of medical spaces. It's not because Hermes was a god of healing apollo is very much the god of healing and apollo's son escalapius who has the sort of staff with the one snake wrapped around it is a god of healing but because of the alchemy part and alchemists you know envision themselves as like the sons of hermes right again we're sort of taking the world not as it is but we're trying to

imagine what could be as they're playing with you know sort of taking the world not as it is, but we're trying to imagine what could be as they're playing with, you know, sort of early chemistry and those kinds of things and transmuting, you know, different materials and all that kind of stuff. They see themselves as the sons of Hermes. And of course, then that association with the caduceus, you know, the twin snakes staff of the wings becomes a symbol that various medical groups use, not because Hermes is a god of medicine medicine but rather because of this sort of like long history of medicine alchemies connection historically my two daughters are huge fans of the percy jackson series and of course on disney now they're doing it right of course i had to last night when the new episode dropped i was like oh

hermes is appearing in this so i made sure i watched the part of the episode that uh you know hermes appears and that story where they're going through Odysseus' story a little bit. And there's Hermes, who's played by Lin-Manuel Miranda this time around. But it's interesting, you know, kind of the way that E-Persist is a god that people want to tell stories about and people have a good time telling stories about. Yeah, you can look to Renaissance art and you'll see plenty of Hermes along the way too. I mean, I think that as a trickster, he is definitely a divinity that continues to capture

our imaginations as people. Baby who steals castle from his elder half-brother. I mean, what a story Hermes has. Christopher, this has been fantastic. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Well, thank you for having me. And thank you for everybody for listening.

Well, there you for having me and thank you for everybody for listening. Well, there you go. There was Professor Christopher Bungard talking all things Hermes. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, the latest in our special mini-series about the Greek gods and goddesses. We've covered quite a few now over the past year and a half, but we still got a few more of those major deities to cover so don't you worry they will be coming they will be released on the ancients over the next few months now the script writer for the story at the beginning of today's episode it was written by andrew house the narrator was lucy davidson the assistant producers for this episode were annie colon and joseph knight the senior producer was elena guthr. And the episode was all mixed together

by our editor, Aidan Lonergan. Thank you all for making this episode a reality. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the Ancients podcast, whether it be on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or elsewhere, make sure that you are following the podcast, that you are subscribed so you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.