Homeric Hymn to Hermes

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes is the fourth and longest of the extant Homeric Hymns — a collection of archaic hexameter poems preserved under Homer’s name but of later, anonymous, and plural composition — and the fullest early literary portrait the tradition possesses of Hermes in his character as the god whose hour is twilight and whose element is transition.

The hymn narrates the day of Hermes’s birth: conceived by Maia on Mount Cyllene, born at dawn, walking by noon, inventor of the lyre from a tortoise he finds at the cave’s mouth, thief by evening of Apollo’s cattle, and by the end of his first day the god who has negotiated his own seat among the Olympians by musical gift. For depth psychology the hymn is canonical because it shows the trickster character of Hermes not as a primitive remnant to be outgrown but as constitutive of the god himself — the patron of communication, of crossing, of the thief’s cleverness and the musician’s invention, necessary to the psychology of transitions the Seba tradition traces under his name. See the full collection at hesiod-homeric-hymns.

Relationships

• hermes
• hesiod-homeric-hymns
• trickster