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Hermes, The Liar Who Invented the Lyre

Here, from the sea, from a wreck off Marathon, comes a bronze boy to show how graceful, clean-cut and free-flowing the unimpeded lines of a Praxitelian nude can be. Here, where the thin and hollow bronze needs neither strut nor counterweight, neither massive draped vase nor tree trunk to anchor it, some close follower of Praxiteles has, with exquisite sensitivity, delicacy and charm, captured the grace and supple beauty of an adolescent boy. Portrayed as a young athlete from the gymnasium, he wears nothing but a gold-leafed headband. His limestone eyes are set with pupils of glass; his nipples are of inlaid copper. One is reminded of Alketas' passion for Praxiteles' lost Eros. But though he may be made for love, he is not Love. No one knows exactly who or what he is. But his headband holds a single thorn or claw (some say a leaf), a sign worn by those who wrestled and worked out in the palaestra; it was also a sign of Hermes, god of athletes and inventor of contests in running, boxing, and wrestling.

The boy's gaze is fixed on something which is no longer there: on the open palm of his left hand is a pin that once held - what? Why not a turtle, with the flat bottom of its shell resting firmly on his flattened outspread palm?

Young Hermes found a turtle on his doorstep and, while admiring its beauty, he began to think how he could turn the thing into a lyre that would sound as lovely as it looked. But what is he doing with his right hand? Does it rest against the door post? Does it pull a string of sheepgut through the shell? Does it hold a real or imaginary plectrum in the air? Or does Hermes snap his fingers in delight, not only at his new invention, but at the bargaining chip he'll have if he gets caught as a thief? For even as a baby in his cradle, this greedy, hungry god of merchants and thieves planned to steal forty head of cattle from Apollo. Hermes grew up fast - so fast that the adolescent we see here is supposedly still an infant, hardly six hours old!

The whole story is charmingly told in one of the Homeric Hymns, songs composed by poets who imitated Homer by recasting mythic narratives into strapping six-foot hexameter lines. The "Hymn to Hermes" tells how the divine child was born and grew up instantly to become the quick-witted, fast-talking god of merchants and thieves, the twelfth and last of the Immortals on Mt. Olympus. It begins with Zeus stealing nightly from the side of his sleeping queen into the cave of the wood nymph Maia, there to conceive

The very crafty,
the super-subtle
Hermes;
thief,
cattle-rustler,
carrier of dreams,
secret agent,
prowler,
and soon to show his stuff
with the immortal gods.
Born in the morning,
he played the lyre
by afternoon, and
by evening had
stolen the cattle
of the Archer Apollo.

(lines 22-33 tr.Charles Boer)

Seized by a passion for roast beef, the newborn leaps up from his crib and races for the door, his heart set on the sacred herd. No sooner does he pass the threshold of his mother's cave, however, than he meets a turtle, chewing the lovely grass and strutting about with a dignified air. Hermes finds the turtle most amusing, and it fits right into his plans. "Hello there, little creature with the splendid shell," he laughs. "You're a mountain turtle, I can tell. But I'm going to pick you up and take you home with me. You'll find it
much better at our house. Outside here, things are bad. Alive, it's true, you're good for warding off black magic spells. But you'll make better music, dead!" So saying, Hermes grabs the turtle with both hands and heads back inside.

Once inside he took a grey, steel knife
And stabbed the life out of that turtle from the mountains.
Then, quick as thought runs through the panic-stricken heart
Of a much-troubled man, or as from twinkling eyes
The sparkles spurt and spin, so in a twinkling
Words and deeds together whirled in famous Hermes' mind.
He measured and cut stalks of reed,
Then stuck them in the backside of the turtle's shell.
Cleverly he stretched cowhide over everything,
Fastened onto it two bow-shaped arms bound with a crossbar,
Stretched seven strings of sheep-gut, each to the others tuned.
Now the lovely toy was done. He tried it out,
String by string he put a pick to it. But in his hands
It sounded terrible! The god then tried
To improvise, singing beautifully, mockingly, along,
As teenage boys, at festivals, make mocking, smart remarks.
He sang of Zeus, old Cronos' son, and Maia, in her gorgeous shoes,
Of how they talked while making love, and how he grandly came to be.
In honor of the slaves who served her, and the nymph's great house,
Of all the tripods in that house, its cauldrons too, he sang.
Then, having sung of these, still other things came pressing on his mind.
He lifted up the hollow lyre, and laid it in his sacred cradJe,
Then from the sweetly scented room he leaped,
Looking all around him, while turning over in his mind
Some neat trick like those done by holdup men
Who do their deeds at this dark hour of night.
(lines 41-67, tr Winslow Shea)

At sundown, Hermes stole away to the shadowed hills of Pylos, where the oxen of the sun were stabled for the night. Leaving only a bull and two herd dogs, he "cut out" fifty cows. To leave misleading tracks, he drove them backwards before him, while he himself walked backwards on a sort of snowshoe-like "sandshoes" that he wove from tamarisk and myrtle twigs. Soon he met an old man working in his vineyard. "Hey, old man, bending your shoulders and digging your plants, you're going to have a lot of wine when all this comes up. But you didn't see what you just saw, okay? You didn't hear what you just heard. Keep quiet and you won't get hurt."

Under cover of darkness, Hermes drove the fifty head of cattle until they reached a tasty meadow by the river Alphaeus, in the northwest Peloponnesus, not far from where Olympia and its famous games would one day be. After the cows had fed on marshplants and clover, he stabled them in a cave. Drilling a twig of laurel into a pomegranate stick until it smoked, he made the world's first fire from scratch. He dug a trench and filled it full of wood, to start the world's first barbecue. He dragged two oxen outside, rolled them over and stabbed them dead. He sliced them up, the flesh, the back (the piece of honor), then the guts filled with black blood. The hides he stretched on cliffs to dry, then he cut the meal into twelve portions. So delicious did they smell, he yearned to gobble them all. But he repressed the urge and burned them all instead - the world's first sacrifice to the Twelve Immortals.

At dawn he sped back unseen to his mother's cave, where, in order to get past the bolts and chains his mother had put up to keep him from "plundering the valley," he turned himself into a mist and slipped through the keyhole. Once inside, he tiptoed to his cradle, where he snuggled down inside his blanket with his lyre and pretended to be asleep. But Maia was not fooled: "Just what have you been up to, smartie? Where were you that you come in at this hour of the night, with impudence written all over you?" And she threatened to let him out - to throw him out. But Hermes had a smart reply: He was a big boy now, and not afraid of rules, or a mother's threats. And he was going to use his gifts of thievery to get them both into heaven, out of that creepy cave and into Mt. Olympos with the other gods, where they belonged. And if Father Zeus won't have it, he'll defy him, and try anyway. "I'm capable, certainly, to be the number one thief. And if Apollo comes looking for me, he'll pay for it. I'll go to his oracle at Delphi, and barge right in, and haul off loads of tripods and fine cauldrons and gold and fiery iron and lots of good stuff. You'll see...."

Apollo, meanwhile, was tracking down his stolen cattle. First, he met the old man pruning his vines. Had he seen his stolen cows? "What really puzzles me [and us!], my dogs and black bull were left behind." The old man hemmed and hawed, but then admitted he had seen a child, a big baby really, walking along zig-zag and driving those cows "along backwards, with their heads facing him." Then Apollo saw a long-winged bird (the crane was a symbol of Hermes) and divined at once who the thief was. He rushed to Pylas, where he saw, amazed, the strange tracks made by Hermes and the cows.

On to Maia's cave he sped. While Hermes rolled himself into a little ball and pretended to be asleep, Apollo searched the whole enormous house. With a shiny key, he entered three special rooms: just gold and silver, and "many dresses of the nymph, some dark, some silver." Divine things, but no cows.

Apollo then confronted Hermes: "Listen, kid, lying in your cradle, tell me where my cows are, and quick! We're going to fight this out, and it won't be very pretty." And he threatened to throw him into the black hole of Hades, doomed to wander in suhterranean darkness, "leading little people around." Hermes denied everything. "I'm just a baby, see, too small and tender-footed for such work. And I've hardly heard of oxen. All I want is mother's milk, hot baths, warm blankets, lots of sleep. I'll even swear an oath: NOT GUILTY!" But Hermes' shifty eyes and whistling made Apollo laugh. "Friend, trickster, sharpie: you must have burgled lots of expensive houses; and soon you'll be robbing shepherds' flocks. So get out of that cradle, Prince of Thieves, or you will die in it." Apollo yanked him up, but Hermes let out a mighty fart and sneeze, and Apollo threw him down.

The two brothers went on arguing like this, until they both ran out of gas and went at last to Mt. Olympos to let Father Zeus settle their dispute. Before all the gods assembled, Zeus demanded of Apollo: "Why do you bring to us as prisoner this cute little newborn?" Apollo reported how the little devil had stolen his oxen and marched them backwards, walking on branches to hide his tracks. In rebuttal, Hermes again denied everything. He accused Apollo of child abuse, and swore on oath: "Not guilty, by the gods!" Then he winked, and clutched his blanket. To see the kid just stand there and lie like that, denying everything so beautifully, made Zeus just roar with laughter. Then he ordered his two sons to settle their differences, and told Hermes to show his brother where he had hidden the stolen herd.

So Hermes led Apollo back to Pylas, and drove the oxen out from the darkness of Hermes' cave into Apollo's light. Then Apollo spotted the two skins hanging on a distant cliff. "You trickster, how could you, just born, cut up and skin two whole cows? I'm shocked to think what you might do when big." He tied Hermes up with willow whips, but Hermes' magic made those on his feet take root and grow into a tangled mass that tied up all the oxen, too.

So Hermes gave Apollo the lyre, and Apollo gave Hermes the herd of cows (plus his bull and dogs and shiny whip, to keep them pregnant, and in line). And then, as the new god of shepherds, Hermes made for himself the world's first shepherd's pipe. But Apollo still did not trust Hermes. "Son of Maia, Guide, smarty, I'm afraid someday you're going to steal my lyre and my curved bow." And he made Hermes swear to never again steal anything of Apollo's. In return Apollo gave Hermes the famous herald's wand, "made of gold and triple-leaved," to be sole messenger for the gods, especially to the underworld. But Apollo refused to give up his monopoly on oracles; if Hermes wants to learn divination, he can learn it from the gruesome threesome, the Fates. And then the "Hymn to Hermes" ends, on a very odd note indeed:

And Hermes mingles now with all men and gods.
And even though he helps a few people,
he cheats an endless number
of the race of mortal men
in the darkness of the night.

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